The Securities and Exchange Commission is proposing to remove a rule that was originally designed to improve how investors get priced on their trades.
The rule in question, proposed Rule 6b-1, was meant to prohibit volume-based transaction pricing for NMS stocks, which are the nationally listed equities that make up the backbone of US markets. In plain English, the rule would have stopped exchanges from offering better pricing to firms that trade in massive volumes, a practice critics argued gave Wall Street’s biggest players an unfair edge over smaller investors.
What volume-based pricing actually means
The SEC originally proposed Rule 6b-1 as part of a broader package of market structure reforms back in 2023. The idea was straightforward: ban the volume discounts so that everyone, from hedge funds to individual investors, would face the same transaction costs. The SEC withdrew that proposal in June 2025. Now, the agency appears to be going further by proposing the elimination of the rule framework entirely rather than simply letting the proposal sit dormant.
A broader pattern of regulatory streamlining
