Subject: S7-2026-12
From: Making Markets Transparent Legitimate & Principled

May. 20, 2026

Figure 2 —"23× Storage Cost Gap"
The SEC proposes to shorten CAT retention from 5 years (originally it was 6) down to 3 to save money.
Here is the cost argument, at AWS April 2026 actual publicly available pricing:
- S3 Standard: $276,000 / PB-year
- S3 Glacier Deep Archive: $11,880 / PB-year
With compression and an expected federal discount: ~$990 / PB-year
That is a 96% reduction... available today, no deletion required.
The Commission chose deletion over architecture. It paid for cost savings with evidence.
Every SEC enforcement lawyer who has ever needed a five-year-old order book will lose the ability to pull it.
I oppose Deleting any Cat Data ever.
#CAT #SEC #File4698 #CloudEconomics