Wednesday, July 7, 2021 On May 17, 2021, the SEC announced that it had settled charges against S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC for alleged violations of Section 17(a)(3) of the Securities Act of 1933 relating to the failure to disclose a feature of an index tracked by an exchange-traded note (ETN) that resulted in the publication of index values that did not accurately reflect the economic value of the ETN. S&P Indices published the index in question, the S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures Index ER, based on the price of certain volatility-based futures contracts, and entered into agreements to license the index to, among others, an issuer of an inverse ETN. S&P Indices designed the index with an “auto hold” feature such that if the index experienced a significant spike, the publication of new index values would be frozen and the prior index value would continue to be published until such time as the index value came back within those thresholds or personnel manually released the auto hold. The ETN also included a provision that would permit the issuer to accelerate redemption of the notes upon the breach of a key metric of volatility.