There were more than 395,000 transactions executed on the SIGMA-X dark pool between July 29 and August 9 2011 at a price that was not the best on offer, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) said in a statement.
During the eight-day trading period, Goldman Sachs was unaware that it was trading through a “protected quotation in these instances”.
The bank also failed to have “reasonably designed written policies and procedures in place to prevent trade-throughs of protected quotations in NMS stocks from November 2008 to August 2011”.
Goldman Sachs returned $1.67m to disadvantaged customers in the case of 395,000 trades.
FINRA said that Goldman Sachs neither admitted nor denied the charges, but consented to the entry of FINRA's findings.
This fine comes soon after Barclays was accused of “fraud and deceit” over dark pool trading.