Dec. 28, 2022
December 28, 2022 I am commenting as a retail investor in favor of the proposed rule to enhance competition for the execution of marketable orders of individual investors. With the exception and requirements associated with this proposal, it is hard to see how any market participant could have a good-faith argument AGAINST the imposition of this rule. While they constantly rail about how \"it's for retail's benefit\" when they stump for payment for order flow practices, one questions the conclusions drawn in that argument in the face of this proposal. It insinuates that retail would rather pay the order flow cost than to pay for a broker to trade his or her order, yet opposing this rule where there is enhanced competition belies this argument. In arguing against enhanced competition, the brokers and market makers making such arguments show their hand: they profit greatly from a lack of competition, it is not in retail traders' interests that they have arranged for payment for order flow. Enhanced, open, and visible competition for order execution helps ensure fairness for players in the market that are already massively outgunned by financial institutions. Industry players like to frame the retail trader as someone just gambling away their extra cash, or irresponsibly spending rent on lottery tickets when, in fact, these are the hardest working people in America and, more often than not, these retail traders are investing their retirement savings, their livelihood, in American companies to keep the dream of a prosperous America alive. In direct opposition to that shining dream are the creatures who have become the cornerstones of the market through deceit and greed. They claim to be for retail's interests, to want to help them prosper, and yet we only need to briefly consult history to see what they do in the shadows. 401ks, for example, were lost in 2008 by people who didn't even participate in the markets because of loosening restrictions and downright malfeasan ce of those market participants who were trusted, in a fiduciary capacity, to manage their interests. Overrating junk securities as investment grade were a direct result of funds being able to purchase such deplorable, and fraudulent, securities. This can only be done in the shadows, where no one is looking. Bringing back competition for retail's orders, doing it in plain view, in the light, is the only way to start gaining back faith in the securities markets. This is a critical point that cannot be overlooked: loss of faith in the markets will ultimately create a loss of faith in American businesses as they lose investors and in the American dollar as investors turn to other forms of protecting their hard earned assets. I am fore enhanced competition, and seeing proof of the same in the open market, and I am far from alone. I speak for myself, but I also speak for all of retail in this.