Finra continues to take disciplinary action against financial services firms that provide inaccurate securities trading information.

Today, the industry's self-regulatory body ordered Goldman Sachs to pay a fine of $3 million over a period of at least three years for various reporting failures.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said Goldman was fined for mismarking nearly 60m short orders as long and related regulatory failures. From October 2015 to April 2018, the company's mislabeled orders totaled more than 14 billion shares, which affected market data and potentially caused investors to suffer financial losses. That, in turn, led to at least 30 months of Goldman client trades being mislabeled.

During this period, the company executed nearly 8 million orders totaling more than 1 billion shares. Due to an inaccurate "long" mark, 12,335 of the orders executed were settled at or below the best bid. In addition, the company violated rules that imposed a circuit breaker on short selling when triggered and only allowed short selling at prices higher than the current best bid in the country.

These mislabeled orders also led the company to file inaccurate trade reports with FINRA and maintain inaccurate books and records. In addition, Goldman misused order marking logic to sell orders placed by a foreign affiliate that incorrectly marked them as short.

During the review, U.S. regulators said Goldman Sachs did not have adequate systems and controls in place to detect and prevent violations. In addition, FINRA's latest fine was imposed for multiple failures to accurately file required trade reports with the appropriate FINRA Trade Reporting Authority (TRF).

"From October 2015 to April 2018, Goldman Sachs mislabeled 59,981,252 short orders as long, of which 26,944,700 were sent to alternative trading Systems (ATS). These orders accounted for less than 1 percent of Goldman's total principal sell orders during that period. These orders were automatically generated to timely hedge Synthetic Products Group's (SPG) combined exposure as a result of executing equity swap transactions with clients. The mismarked order was due to Goldman Sachs implementing an upgrade to the relevant automated trading software designed to simplify this order process, "the statement read.

Goldman agreed with Finra's order but did not admit or deny the findings. In addition to paying the fine, the company also agreed to accept a reprimand and must cease and desist from further violations.