Feb. 7, 2022
Good Morning Securities and Exchange Commission, First I would like to thank the entire SEC for the work to bring fairer markets to all stakeholders, and in helping retail investors feel more comfortable about investing in the U.S. stock market. My name is Daniel Lopez, and I am currently invested in two retail companies since January 2021. Before last year, I never considered directly investing in the stock market due to its mystifying nature. However, because of the enormous news that GameStop and others made last January I found myself actually taking up huge amounts of time to sit, read, and learn about the intersection between finance, and investing. I have spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to understand the inner workings of the stock market, and along the journey I have come to realize the massive amounts of corruption. Dark pools that concentrate up to 90 - 95% of retail orders for MMs help to hide the true price of a stock, so that wholesalers could make money from the spread on the sale. Naked-shorting is an illegal practice, yet it would seem that certain companies have made their entire business model based on the demise of other companies. Shorting a company's stock should be limited to about 50 percent of the free float, because with access to an "unlimited," amount of capital no American institution is safe from the value of their stock plummeting to zero (Blockbuster, Sears, etc.). This is not good business. Failure-to-Deliver on stocks, loose locating of shares-to-borrow practices, and securities swaps all should be investigated for misuse as well. Currently, market makers, wholesalers, and internalizers have cornered the market, and retail is currently locked in a major struggle with some bad actors to bring these corruption issues to light at our own expense. Please continue to investigate the criminality of Wall St., so that my family could have a brighter future with some semblance of financial security. I sincerely believe that the long-term solvency of the U.S. stock market is riding on the shoulders of regular working families who are risking more of our lively-hoods than some who lobby for a bail-out when their investments sour. Thank you, Daniel J. Lopez