Nasdaq Texas raises its options regulatory fee

NTX Options will carry a slightly higher regulatory charge starting July 1, 2026. On Nasdaq Texas, the Options Regulatory Fee, or ORF, rises from $0.0198 to $0.0200 per contract side, a small change that can still matter to broker-dealers, market makers and other firms routing order flow through the exchange.

At the federal level, the Securities and Exchange Commission published notice of the change on June 18 after Nasdaq Texas filed it earlier this month. The exchange says the higher rate reflects a review of its regulatory costs since July 2025.

Where the charge follows the trade

The fee applies to customer options transactions cleared by the Options Clearing Corporation and is assessed on executions that happen on the exchange. That makes it part of the cost path for trades that pass through Nasdaq Texas, even if the increase itself is slight.

Nasdaq Texas says ORF is meant to recover a material portion of the exchange’s options regulatory costs, including surveillance, investigations and examinations. The new rate is still designed to stay below the exchange’s full regulatory cost target.

A cleanup in the rule text

Along with the rate change, Nasdaq Texas is making a non-substantive update to Options 7, Section 5, the rule text that describes how ORF is collected. The exchange says the rewrite is meant to make the collection process clearer, not to change the substance of the fee itself.