Jan. 04, 2022
You can establish all the rules you want, but the bottom line is that if there is no punishment for breaking the rules, there’s no incentive to follow them. For example, if a retail investor fails to deliver, you go to jail. But if a hedge fund does it, all you get is a warning to please deliver your shares. This hypocrisy needs to stop. How about failure to deliver is just illegal across the board, and we eliminate all this criminal behavior in the first place? The trading rules we have in place are horribly outdated for a digital age, and the results are these stupid games being played with language and loopholes. Rules need to be enforced, and not with useless fines, but with real jail time. Brokerages, market makers and hedge funds need to understand, once and for all, that they are not above the law. You can’t regulate fraud, but you can, for sure, punish it. Slaps on the wrist and petty fines are just the cost of doing business for brokerages, market makers and hedge funds- they’re meaningless and a waste of time. The message needs to be sent that if bad actors want to manipulate the rules, there will be swift and devastating consequences, and that means incarceration. So many rule reforms can be made, certainly, but until these rules are enforced, nothing will ever change. Please post as "Anonymous"