February 7, 2022
I am strongly in favor of the new regulations supporting more transparency in our financial markets by holding the big players within those markets accountable through implementation of more timely and accurate reporting of their positions and losses.
Hedge funds, market makers, brokerages, et al. have so many advantages against retail investors to where the playing field is, unfairly, skewed in their advantage. Past regulations are riddled with loopholes that can and have been abused. Which has lead to secrecy, and my personal belief, nefarious trading in the form of naked short selling by giving these firms the ability to conduct high frequency trades and order routing off exchange from the public eye. As well as giving these entities the power to take advantage of current systems by passing their debts/payments back and forth through dark exchanges and ATS to avoid being margin called. The amount of Fails to Deliver we have seen over the past year on meme stocks and the extreme reverse repos are indicative to this, in my opinion. And there is no reason 90-95% of retail orders are currently be trading off of lit exchanges.
All this is to say, through the few tools we have, retail traders have been able to see that theres something seriously awry in our financial markets. And I firmly believe that more transparency will not only provide retail investors the tools to trade with increased safety in our markets, but will also oust the bad players who have been using it as their own personal playground that will, inevitably, have huge, rippling side effects that will be felt throughout our global economy in the form of a market failure if they continue to go unchecked.
That is why I commend your agency for acknowledging this very real problem and look forward to increased transparency and, hopefully, a full T-0 system that will completely remove the ability for bad actors to kick the can on their risky investments at the Peoples expense. I have great hope that these new regulations will work toward actually making our financial markets as fair as we claim them to be.