ASA Sends Letter to Federal Regulators: Do No Harm to the Fixed Income Markets

The American Securities Association sent a letter (available here) to the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission questioning the need for any changes to the fixed income market structure in municipal, corporate, and asset-backed securities.

“The fixed income markets have performed very well through the Fed’s interest rate hiking cycle, the SVB failure, and the Covid crash in March of 2020,” ASA President & CEO Chris Iacovella said. “It is imperative that regulators do not rely on academic theories or political ideologies to change a market structure that has functioned very well through multiple crises and black swan events. Any change to the well-functioning fixed income market without clear and demonstrable evidence of a market failure would be reckless.”

ASA has submitted numerous comment letters siting this fact to FINRA and the MSRB on recently proposed rule changes on post trade reporting (here), Rule 4210 (here), and Rule 15c 2-11(here), among others.