Edward D. Jones & Co. LP has agreed to pay a $200,000 fine and $52,000 in customer restitution in settling a Finra case alleging improper sales of non-traditional ETFs.
 
Finra signed off on the settlement last week.
 
The regulator charged Jones with failing to supervise trades in leveraged and inverse ETFs from January 2008 through July 2009, when the company quit selling the products.
 
Jones customers engaged in 15,000 non-traditional ETF transactions, Finra said, with a value of approximately $164 million.
 
The settlement says that until June 2009, when Finra issued a regulatory notice warning firms about non-traditional ETFs, Jones did not monitor either the length of time customers held positions or the effect of holding periods on those ETF positions.
 
The 2009 Finra notice said non-traditional ETFs that are reset daily to track underlying indexes were not suitable for investors who planned to hold them for more than one day.
 
In settling, Jones neither admitted nor denied the charges.
 
“Edward Jones ceased trading non-traditional ETFs in 2009 before the start of the [Finra] inquiry, which led to sanctions against broker-dealers industrywide,” said Jones spokeswoman Regina DeLuca-Imral in an e-mail.