U.S. Securities News

The scale of what that machinery covers is set out in the SEC’s fiscal 2026 congressional budget justification. The agency reports oversight of more than 33,000 entities, among them 26 national securities exchanges, more than 3,300 broker-dealers, 109 alternative trading systems, 318 transfer agents, 6 active registered clearing agencies, more than 13,500 registered funds and more than 15,900 investment advisers. The same document puts the reporting population at more than 7,400 companies whose disclosure and financial statements the staff reviews, and describes the markets under supervision as totalling more than $100 trillion. The figures for exchanges, broker-dealers and transfer agents are stated as of FY 2024.

Trading is fragmented across those 26 exchanges and the alternative trading systems, but the day is organised around the primary listing venues’ auctions. The New York Stock Exchange runs an Early Trading Session from 7:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Eastern time, a Core Trading Session from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. opened by the Core Open Auction, a Closing Imbalance Period from 3:50 p.m., a Closing Auction at 4:00 p.m., and a Late Trading Session to 8:00 p.m. Settlement is one business day after the trade. The Commission adopted the shortening from T+2 to T+1 on Feb. 15, 2023, with a compliance date of May 28, 2024, and paired it with same-day allocation, confirmation and affirmation requirements and straight-through processing obligations on central matching services.

Equities share the market with the largest government bond programme in the world. Treasury’s Debt to the Penny series put total public debt outstanding at $40,112,464,593,206.30 on 2026-09-01, of which $32,420,529,452,197.11 was held by the public. The Office of Debt Management reported total receipts of $4,151 billion and total outlays of $5,518 billion through Q3 FY2026, projected privately-held net marketable borrowing of $739 billion for Q4 FY2026 against an assumed end-of-quarter cash balance of $950 billion, and noted that all primary dealers expected no changes to nominal coupon, TIPS or floating rate note issuance sizes at the August refunding.

Index construction is a private, published discipline rather than a state function. The Nasdaq-100 Index measures 100 of the largest Nasdaq-listed non-financial companies on a modified market capitalisation weighting, restricts membership to companies primarily listed on a U.S. Nasdaq-affiliated exchange, excludes anything classified in the Financial Industry under the Industry Classification Benchmark, and rules out real estate investment trusts, special purpose acquisition companies and when-issued securities. GSN covers this market through company filings and exchange announcements, Commission rulemaking and enforcement, and Treasury issuance.