Aug. 16, 2022
August 16, 2022 To whom it may concern, As a retail investor, it is frankly tiring, discouraging, and infuriating to watch my carefully chosen investments (made with MY OWN hard earned cash, by the way) get manipulated by entities with access to a wide ranging set of tools that frankly amount to cheating. Change needs to happen, and it needs to happen now. Transaction by transaction reporting needs to be implemented. Period. There should be zero excuse for a hedge fund or any other entity to protest against transparency. After the recklessness of 2008 and beyond, it is clear that these entities need public transparency to ensure that their greed and mistakes dont cost our country its livelihood. 15 minute reporting needs to be implemented. Is it more expensive to maintain? Sure. Is it worth the increase in transparency, to endure these institutions arent manipulating loopholes, or otherwise defrauding the system for their own benefit? Absolutely. Companies that are being targeted by short sellers need a more level playing field to defend themselves against predatory behavior initiated by said short sellers. Short selling in the dark sidesteps price discovery, the basis of a true free and fair market. No, one institution doesnt know better - and the moment we concede ground to such groups and enable them to do whatever they wish under the disguise of them knowing better, we have destroyed the free and fair markets. Frankly, short selling itself is as unAmerican as it gets - actively betting on your fellow American entrepreneurs and innovators to fail? Let the market work out the winners and losers naturally, as it was supposed to - we dont need to further empower trigger happy institutions that are hell bent on shorting good companies into the ground because they know better. But that is a discussion for another time. Chairman Gensler has repeatedly stated that he is fighting for the retail investor. Well, the best way he can do that is to increase retails access to data, and limit the institutions ability to conceal that data via cloak-and-dagger behind-the-scenes manipulation. So give us a fair shot at the American markets - give us accurate data that we can use. We are grown ups, we can handle it. But this brings me to my last point of concern - the opaque nature of our markets, including the long, untracked lending chains, present a significant risk in the form of unchecked obligations that can cripple this countrys economy and beyond. We know these risks already exist - it is time we stop letting these entities exacerbate the problem even more. Bring this information out into the public and let the chips fall where they may. That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be. Letting Wall Street gamble away our livelihood while simultaneously risking economic disaster is setting ourselves up for failure. And that failure is coming - you know it, they know it, we the retail investors know it, and you all know that we know it. Have we not learned our lesson from 2008?