Mar. 31, 2023
Dear sir/madam, I fully support the proposed rule and ask that you implement it as soon as possible. For too long retail investors have been left in the dark about exchanges on Wall Street. I think allowing certain brokers/market makers to be the first to receive orders directly contradicts the statement that we have a fair and free market. Instead, fair and free would be to have all orders go to public auction where all entities, including pension funds, have an opportunity to fill orders. I also believe that dark pools are detrimental to our markets. How is trading fair and free if the public doesn’t get an insight to what is going on in these dark pools? At the very least these alternative trading systems should provide quotes and trade data to allow transparency for all parties. The current state of our market is anticompetitive. There are many special privileges granted to brokers and market makers and there aren’t any policies in place requiring them to publicly share this data. The recent events in the banking sphere have made retail investors very skeptical of the legitimacy of our markets. A rising concern among retail investors is that some relationships among entities look, walk, and quack like conflicts of interest. We currently have hedges funds that fall under the same umbrella as market markers. This seems like an obvious conflict of interest where you can bet along side the market you influence. I am in full support of the proposed rule and I ask that you implement it immediately. This is a step in the right direction to a fair and free market and regaining retail’s trust. Sincerely, Jaclyn Connolly