Mar. 22, 2023
Dear SEC, I am writing to you as an individual investor who cares about the fairness and transparency of our markets. I have been investing for a few years now, mostly in stocks and ETFs that I like and believe in. I don’t have a lot of money to spare, but I try to save some every month and put it into my brokerage account. I have heard that you are considering some changes to the rules that govern how brokers execute our orders. I want to share my thoughts with you and ask you to do what is best for individual investors like me. One of the things that bothers me is something called payment for order flow (PFOF), which is when brokers get paid by market makers or exchanges for sending orders to them. This sounds like a bad deal for individual investors like me. It means that brokers are not looking out for our best interests when they execute our orders. It means that we get less money for our trades than we should. It also means that the market is not working as well as it could, because prices are not reflecting the true supply and demand. Another thing that I think would help us is something called the order competition rule (OCR). This rule would require brokers to send orders to places where they can get better prices or sizes than those offered by wholesalers or exchanges with rebates. This sounds like a good idea to me, because it would make sure that brokers are doing their job right and getting us the best deals possible. I hope that you will adopt both these changes and ban PFOF altogether. I think this would make the market more fair and transparent for individual investors like me. Thank you for your time and attention. Please do what is right for us small folks who just want a fair chance in the market.