Aug. 16, 2022
August 16, 2022 In poker there is a saying, if you can't spot the sucker in your first 10 minutes at the table, the sucker is you. I started investing in the mid 90's with a group of friends. We were each investing small amounts and effectively lost it all within a 12 month span. At the time, many of us gravitated toward small cap energy companies that were being touted by talking heads around the internet and on TV. Many of these companies suddenly went bankrupt. I lost something like $2000 total. At the time, this was ALL my spare money. I realized I was the sucker in this rigged casino and vowed off the stock market forever. With limited access to information, pulling my chips from the table and leaving the market was the smart play. Several years later I realized that we had fallen prey to the predatory practices surrounding Enron. But forever isn't always. During the initial Covid lockdown in 2020, I started investing small amounts outside of my managed 401K. The events of January 2021 made me realize the markets are still quite opaque, but there were others like me who felt the same way about the corrupt and biased markets. The big players hide behind delayed self reporting. The damage is done long before individual investors can react. When I learned of this proposal (S7-18-21), for the first time in my 50+ years, I felt obligated to act. The playing field MUST be leveled. Items within this proposal are MUST HAVES in a free and fair market. Vulnerable Companies MUST HAVE a clear view of the financial terrorists coming after them. Companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to take preventive measures. Without transparency, Companies may not be aware of the predators coming for them. The public MUST HAVE access to current information. 15 minutes seems like a reasonable ask. The public MUST HAVE transaction by transaction reporting, because certainly retail brokers have and share that information about retail investors. There are movements afoot amongst retail investors. A new generation of armchair watch dogs are prowling the markets and ferreting out corruption. For this to work, retail investors need regulators to be a trusted partner. Working to increase access to information about actions that may be in direct conflict with their investing objectives is a bare minimum. It is clear that the big players in the financial space already have it about retail. Many retail investors are speculating that, as I write this on 16 AUG 2022, we are on the precipice of a major market event. If the event is as predicted, many of it's roots will be traced back to long, untracked lending chains. It seems like common sense that there would be required reporting requirements surrounding that.