November 4, 2004
I feel that this service, as it is currently priced, will increase the abuses and inequalities in the municipal bond market. I believe that this service will be of immediate benefit to well monied bond dealers at the expense of small investors. I think that the MSRB is drastically inflating the delivery fee to discourage small bond investors from using the real time service. This way only brokerage/dealer houses and other well endowed sources will be privy to this information, giving them further advantage over small investors. If the MSRB wants to actually help the small municipal bond investor have any degree of information parity with the larger firms they should cut the fee for this service as far as possible, perhaps even make it free given the minimal cost of bandwidth to provide it.