Abstract: An automated marketplace is separated into tiers, with behavioral requirements for each tier. Tier eligibility is a “structural incentive” for market participants to exhibit desirable behavior and eschew undesirable behavior. Tiered eligibility also reflects the natural imbalance of liquidity in the market and the need to preserve the identity of a class of liquidity providers, which further leads to a structure that can preserve the integrity of person-to-person trading relationships even in an automated environment. Within each tier, participant behavior leads to a ranking for that participant. When specific events occur, these events are allocated based on participant ranking. Participant ranking is an “activity incentive” that influences the behavior of market participants. Certain events are defined as desirable or undesirable, and when performed by a market participant, lead to positive incentives or negative incentives, of structural and/or monetary type.

Abstract: A stock loan system enables a non-clearing member lender to lend to a non-clearing member borrower; each of the non-clearing members is associated with a respective clearing member. When a clearing member defaults, the stock loan system automatically tries to reassign the loan to a backup clearing member, or if no backup clearing member is available, the stock loan system automatically terminates the stock loan, thereby avoiding the loan being in a legal limbo due to the default of the clearing member.