SEC v. Athena Capital Research, LLC (marking the close, 2014)

Settled

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In October 2014 the SEC settled an administrative proceeding with Athena Capital Research, LLC, a New York high-frequency trading firm found to have manipulated the Nasdaq closing prices of thousands of stocks between June and December 2009 with last-seconds orders. Athena was censured and agreed to a $1 million civil penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$1m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$1m

Alleged gain

—

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced this settled order on October 16, 2014 in administrative proceeding 3-16199. The respondent is Athena Capital Research, LLC (0 individuals, 1 entity). Athena neither admitted nor denied the findings.

The order finds that, from at least June through December 2009, Athena's algorithms (internally called "Gravy") placed large buy or sell orders in the final two seconds before the 4:00 p.m. Nasdaq close, using the exchange's order-imbalance messages, to push closing prices slightly up or down. Its trades made up over 70 percent of Nasdaq volume in the affected stocks in those seconds, and the moved closing prices made its other strategies more reliably profitable. The SEC found violations of Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5.

Earlier versions of this record tagged the matter as options expiry pinning because the order mentions Nasdaq's alert about scrutiny on expiration and rebalance days. The conduct charged is closing-price marking, not pinning of option strikes, so the tag has been changed to marking the close.

Athena was ordered to cease and desist, was censured and was ordered to pay a $1,000,000 civil money penalty. No disgorgement is recorded.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Marking the close — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2014-10-16 Administrative proceeding instituted (cease-and-desist)

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEC order

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.