Round Lot

Any quantity fewer than one round lot is an odd lot. 

Any quantity greater than one round lot that is not an exact multiple of the round lot size is a mixed lot. 

The distinction between round lots and odd lots governs how quotes are treated in the consolidated data infrastructure, how market makers are obligated to perform, how the options contract multiplier is set, and how post-trade transparency is applied across the national market system — making it one of the most structurally foundational terms in United States securities market regulation.

The Historical Origin — One Hundred Shares

The one hundred share round lot convention originated in the earliest period of organised securities trading in the United States when the operational mechanics of floor-based trading — handwritten order tickets, manual position tracking, paper stock certificates, and the physical transfer of share ownership — were substantially more efficient when transactions occurred in standardised, manageable quantities. 

One hundred shares became the universal standard on the New York Stock Exchange and was subsequently adopted across all other domestic equity markets, embedded in exchange rules, clearing and settlement procedures, and market making conventions that persisted unchanged for well over a century.

The fixed commission structure established by the Buttonwood Agreement and maintained from 1792 through the NYSE's fixed commission regime reinforced the round lot convention — commission schedules were built around round lot transactions, with odd lot orders typically routed to a specialist odd lot dealer who handled them separately at a slight price disadvantage to the investor. 

The abolition of fixed commissions on May 1, 1975 — May Day — began loosening some of the structural rigidities around round lots, but the one hundred share definition remained embedded in exchange rules, clearing infrastructure, and regulatory frameworks long after the economic rationale for it had partially eroded.

The Formal Regulation NMS Definition — Rule 600(b)(93)

Until 2020, the term round lot was defined only in the rules of individual listing exchanges — it had no single federal regulatory definition despite its central role in how market data was calculated and displayed. 

The NBBO — the national best bid and offer — was constructed exclusively from round lot quotations, meaning that any quote for fewer than one hundred shares was excluded from the consolidated price benchmark that all market participants relied upon for price discovery and best execution measurement. 

This created a significant information asymmetry — sophisticated institutional market participants with access to proprietary data feeds could see all quotations including odd lot prices, while retail investors relying on the consolidated tape saw only round lot quotations that may not have reflected the actual best available price.

The SEC addressed this asymmetry through the Market Data Infrastructure Rules adopted in December 2020, which included a formal definition of round lot under Rule 600(b)(93) of Regulation NMS and added odd lot quotation information to the consolidated market data infrastructure. 

Implementation of the full MDI Rules was significantly delayed, but on September 18, 2024, the SEC adopted final rules accelerating the round lot definition changes and the inclusion of odd lot information in core consolidated market data.

The new round lot definition — formally effective and implemented on the first business day of November 2025 — replaces the uniform one hundred share convention with a price-tiered variable structure. 

Under Rule 600(b)(93) as amended, each NMS stock is assigned a round lot size based on its average closing price on its primary listing exchange during a one-month evaluation period, with two evaluation periods per year — March for the period from May through October and September for the period from November through April.

Stocks with an average closing price of two hundred and fifty dollars or less per share retain the traditional round lot size of one hundred shares — the vast majority of listed equities fall into this category. Stocks with an average closing price above two hundred and fifty dollars and up to one thousand dollars per share have a round lot size of forty shares. 

Stocks with an average closing price above one thousand dollars and up to ten thousand dollars per share have a round lot size of ten shares. Stocks with an average closing price above ten thousand dollars per share — a category that as of implementation included only Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares — have a round lot size of one share.

This tiered structure addresses a long-standing market structure problem caused by the dramatic rise in stock prices over recent decades. 

When Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares trade above five hundred thousand dollars, a one hundred share round lot represents a fifty million dollar minimum trading unit — an absurd threshold that effectively excludes every investor except the very largest institutions from participating in round lot quoted prices. 

The variable round lot framework ensures that the round lot convention scales appropriately with stock prices rather than creating progressively larger minimum trading thresholds as companies allow share prices to rise without stock splits.

The NBBO — Why Round Lots Have Always Mattered

The national best bid and offer — the consolidated highest bid and lowest ask across all national securities exchanges — has historically been calculated exclusively from round lot quotations. Under Regulation NMS Rule 603, Securities Information Processors compute and disseminate the NBBO from the round lot quotes submitted by exchanges and market makers through the consolidated quotation system. 

Odd lot quotes — bids and offers for fewer than the applicable round lot size — have been excluded from the NBBO calculation entirely, meaning that the publicly disseminated benchmark price in any given stock may not have reflected the actual best available price in the market when the best price was quoted in odd lot size.

The information asymmetry this created was significant and disproportionately disadvantaged retail investors. Large institutional participants and high-frequency trading firms with access to proprietary exchange data feeds — the full depth of book including all odd lot quotes — could see and respond to prices better than the NBBO while retail investors relying on the consolidated tape remained unaware of those prices. 

The 2024 rule changes — requiring dissemination of odd lot information including the Best Odd-Lot Order as a new data element in the consolidated feeds, with implementation of odd lot quotation dissemination scheduled for May 1, 2026 — directly address this asymmetry by bringing meaningful odd lot price information into the core consolidated data stream available to all market participants.

Round Lots and Market Maker Obligations

Under Regulation NMS Rule 602 — the Firm Quote Rule — market makers are required to honour their displayed quotations up to the quoted size. Quote sizes in the national market system are expressed in round lots — a displayed bid size of ten means the market maker is willing to buy ten round lots of the applicable round lot size at the quoted bid price. 

The firm quote obligation runs to the full displayed size — a market maker that quotes a bid of fifty dollars for ten round lots of a hundred-dollar stock must purchase one thousand shares at fifty dollars from any seller presenting a sell order of one thousand shares or fewer.

This firm quote obligation is what gives the round lot definition its regulatory consequence — it is not merely a trading convention but the trigger for a legally enforceable commitment. By defining round lots and requiring firm quotes in round lot sizes, Regulation NMS ensures that the prices displayed to investors are genuine commitments rather than indicative interest that can be withdrawn when unfavourable orders arrive. The integrity of the consolidated quotation system — and the trust investors place in displayed prices — depends on this obligation being reliably honoured.

Round Lots and the Options Contract

The round lot convention is the direct basis for the standard equity options contract multiplier and is the reason that all options calculations require multiplication by one hundred. Every standard exchange-listed equity option contract covers exactly one hundred shares of the underlying security — one standard round lot — as established by the Options Clearing Corporation's standardised contract specifications and embedded in FINRA Rule 2360.

This relationship means that the entire analytical framework of options — premium calculations, maximum gain, maximum loss, breakeven prices, and the dollar value of all Greeks — is built on the one hundred share foundation. A call option with a three dollar per-share premium covers one hundred shares and costs three hundred dollars per contract. A put option with a two dollar and fifty cent per-share premium costs two hundred and fifty dollars per contract. No matter how large or small the underlying stock price, no matter how far in or out of the money the option is, the total dollar amount of any options calculation multiplies the per-share figure by one hundred because the contract covers exactly one round lot.

The options market has not adopted the new variable round lot framework from Regulation NMS Rule 600(b)(93) — all standard equity options contracts continue to cover one hundred shares regardless of the underlying stock's price tier. The variable round lot concept applies to how equity quotes are displayed and how the NBBO is calculated in the equity market, but the OCC's contract specifications remain based on the traditional one hundred share convention for all standard equity options.

Round Lots and Clearing — The DTCC Framework

Every equity securities transaction that settles through the national clearance and settlement system flows through the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation — the parent organisation of the National Securities Clearing Corporation and the Depository Trust Company. The NSCC nets and clears equity transactions on a multilateral basis, with the DTC providing the centralised securities depository through which book-entry ownership transfers occur.

The clearing and settlement infrastructure was built around round lot conventions that maximised the efficiency of multilateral netting — the process by which offsetting buy and sell positions across many broker-dealers are netted to produce a much smaller set of actual settlement obligations. Round lot transactions are processed through the NSCC's Continuous Net Settlement system, which computes end-of-day net positions for each clearing member and generates the minimum set of securities and cash transfers required to settle all netted transactions simultaneously. This netting efficiency — which dramatically reduces the settlement volume relative to total trading volume — was historically more effective when transaction quantities were standardised in round lot multiples.

Modern electronic trading has substantially reduced the operational significance of the round lot convention for clearing purposes — electronic book-entry settlement through the DTC's same-day funds settlement system processes odd lot and fractional share transactions as efficiently as round lots. 

But the round lot definition continues to matter for the NSCC's margin calculations — concentrated positions measured in round lots affect the Clearing Fund deposits required of clearing members.

Round Lots, Odd Lots, and Short Sale Marking

Under Regulation SHO — the SEC's comprehensive short sale regulatory framework — every sell order must be marked long, short, or short exempt under Rule 200. The marking obligation applies to all sell orders regardless of whether they involve round lots, odd lots, or mixed lots. However, the bona fide market making exception from the locate requirement under Rule 203(b)(2) and the alternative uptick rule under Rule 201 both reference round lots in the context of their operational mechanics — the threshold calculations for the Rule 201 ten percent price decline circuit breaker are based on the prior day's closing price of the security, and the resulting restriction applies to all short sale orders regardless of lot size.

Round Lots in the Fixed Income Market

In the fixed income markets, round lot conventions differ substantially from the equity market standard and vary by instrument type.

Corporate bonds traded over the counter and reported to FINRA's TRACE system have historically used one million dollars in face value as the institutional round lot standard, with transactions of one hundred thousand dollars or less considered retail-size or odd lot transactions. The bid-ask spread and price transparency available for odd lot corporate bond transactions have historically been meaningfully worse than for institutional round lot transactions — a consequence of the OTC market structure in which dealers post quotes for standard size transactions and negotiate individual prices for non-standard sizes. FINRA's TRACE reporting system captures post-trade data for all transaction sizes, but the pre-trade price discovery available to retail odd lot buyers has historically been substantially inferior to the price information available for institutional round lot purchasers.

Municipal bonds traditionally define a round lot as one hundred bonds at one thousand dollars par value per bond — one hundred thousand dollars in face value. Retail municipal bond transactions below one hundred thousand dollars face value are technically odd lots in market convention, though the MSRB's rules do not specify a formal round lot definition. Treasury securities are auctioned in minimum face value increments of one hundred dollars under 31 CFR Part 356, but the practical institutional round lot in the Treasury market is one million dollars — the minimum transaction size for most interdealer repo and securities lending transactions involving government securities.

The Information Asymmetry Problem — Why the Reform Matters

The traditional hundred share round lot convention created a structural information asymmetry that became increasingly significant as stock prices rose and trading fragmented across multiple venues. When only round lot quotes counted toward the NBBO, any stock trading at three hundred dollars per share had an NBBO constructed from quotes for thirty thousand dollar minimum round lot transactions — but retail investors trading a few shares at a time were transacting in the odd lot market that was invisible to the consolidated tape. Institutional participants with access to proprietary data could see the actual best available prices in the market. Retail investors could not.

The SEC's 2024 reforms — accelerating the variable round lot definition and adding odd lot quotation data to consolidated feeds — directly address this disparity. By reducing the round lot size for high-priced stocks and bringing odd lot best quotes into the consolidated data stream, the regulatory framework improves the quality of price information available to retail investors and reduces the information advantage historically available only to sophisticated institutional participants with access to proprietary exchange data.

Examination Relevance and Key Takeaways

The round lot is tested on the SIE and Series 7 examinations in the context of equity trading conventions, the NBBO, market maker obligations, options contract specifications, and the distinction from odd lots and mixed lots.

The key points to retain are these.

A round lot is the standard unit of equity trading — for most stocks, one hundred shares or any multiple thereof. An odd lot is any quantity fewer than the applicable round lot size. A mixed lot combines at least one round lot with an additional quantity below the round lot size — any total that is not an exact multiple of the round lot size. Regulation NMS Rule 600(b)(93) — as amended by the September 2024 final rules implementing the 2020 Market Data Infrastructure Rules, effective November 2025 — replaced the uniform one hundred share round lot with a price-tiered variable framework: one hundred shares for stocks priced two hundred and fifty dollars or less; forty shares for stocks priced two hundred and fifty dollars and one cent through one thousand dollars; ten shares for stocks priced one thousand dollars and one cent through ten thousand dollars; and one share for stocks priced above ten thousand dollars. Round lot sizes are assigned semiannually based on the prior one-month evaluation period closing prices.

The NBBO has historically been computed exclusively from round lot quotations under Regulation NMS Rule 603 — odd lot quotes below the round lot size threshold were excluded from the consolidated benchmark price, creating an information asymmetry disadvantaging retail investors relative to institutional participants with access to proprietary data feeds. The 2024 reforms require dissemination of odd lot quotation information including the Best Odd-Lot Order in consolidated market data, with full odd lot quote dissemination from exchanges to the consolidated tape scheduled for May 1, 2026. Market maker firm quote obligations under Regulation NMS Rule 602 run to the full displayed size expressed in round lots — a displayed size of ten means the market maker must honour the quote for ten round lots at the quoted price upon receipt of an order. All standard exchange-listed equity options contracts cover exactly one hundred shares — one traditional round lot — regardless of the variable round lot framework applicable to equity quotations, as the OCC's standardised contract specifications retain the hundred share convention for all standard equity options. In the fixed income market, round lot conventions vary by instrument — corporate bond institutional round lots are typically one million dollars face value; municipal bond round lots are one hundred bonds equalling one hundred thousand dollars face value; Treasury securities are auctioned in minimum one hundred dollar face value increments under 31 CFR Part 356 with institutional round lots typically one million dollars.