Apr. 20, 2022
The proposed rule change is an absolute slap in the face to retail investors. What you guys refer to as "market makers" are not the entirety of the market. The market is a FREE market, and should always remain so. The rules should not constantly be bent, destroyed, broken, or rewritten while having only these "market makers" in mind, which is precisely what this proposed rule seeks to do. It completely eliminates any sort of risk involving their naked shorting, and not only that, is a ringing endorsement to continue doing so. It helps to eliminate true price discovery in favor of illegitimate practices that these so-called "market makers" have been doing for years, in regards to blatantly being able to manipulate the price. Giving them even more safety nets for their malicious market practice is absolutely absurd to even suggest. It has been constantly said that their decision to naked short is a high-risk scenario for them, but why is the SEC seeking to eliminate all risk associated with these practices? Why are individual retail investors, as well as the companies they are aggressively shorting forced to constantly play with the deck stacked against them, with all odds against them, while these malicious practices are allowed to continue with absolutely no consequences for their actions? Why am I allowed to put my hard-earned money into a market that has been made increasingly more corrupt and unfair, while I am allowed to acknowledge and understand the risks of doing so, but these "market makers" are allowed to route through dark pools, take advantage of FTDs and PFOFs, have infinite safety nets (with more being proposed by this very rule change) and will have absolutely no accountability when it comes to blatant manipulation and price obfuscation of the stocks that I choose to invest in? Who exactly are they "making the markets" for, if not retail investors? What they're really doing is making the markets less accessible for retail investors, and more accessible for their cohorts to aggressively attempt to drive businesses into the ground by helping to manipulate, or completely hide the true price, of the stock of a company. These practices can quite literally ruin businesses, while they as millionaires become billionaires, especially when getting the go-ahead from the overseers and SEC to do so. It is absolutely insane as a retail investor, to watch these entities have an unfair advantage in every single scenario, with more advantages heaped onto them, while the stocks I elect to buy into are manipulated into the ground simply because those businesses were the victims of aggressive, naked shorting. This rule does not benefit retail investors. This is not "Trickle-down economics." Constantly pandering and protecting entities that willingly engage in infinite-risk scenarios such as naked shorting does not translate into those same entities turning around and helping to engage retail investors. It is already difficult enough for a retail investor to engage with the market, and this rule seeks to make it even more difficult. Each and every layer of protection and safety net placed onto these entities can and will be used directly against retail investors, and other smaller entities. They are not "market makers" they are profiteering, capitalizing, and expanding their absurd wealth by exponential numbers by using shady tactics in order to maintain their stranglehold on businesses they have shorted. I have read through this rule change, and I must ask you: If their practices are putting the economy at risk, practices that they knew would put the economy at risk, practices they knew have an absurdly high stake attached to them...why would you seek to further enable this destructive behavior by protecting them from consequences, and not putting a stop to such behaviors? This rule cannot be allowed to pass. This rule, if passed, will have an enormous gravity attached to it that will begin to deteriorate all trust in the stock market, and expose it as nothing but a scam perpetrated by Wall Street elites to multiply their monetary worth. That is who these people are, and that is who this rule seeks to protect. The faith in the stock market will begin to crumble, as it has already started for so many investors, myself included, who are absolutely appalled at the level of manipulation that has been allowed to pass unfettered right before our very eyes. This rule is not proposed for the betterment of the stock markets, it does not help retail investors. It is a sham, a farce, and a spit in the face of retail investors while using as much legal jargon and fancy words to mask their true intentions and hope nobody cares enough to read through it. The practices they are engaging in is supposed to be a high-risk scenario for which they will be responsible for if the situation goes outside of their control (which they use every illicit and shady tactic they can to control), but even the "Fire Sale Mitigation" text they use is a fancy way of deflecting any and all responsibility for their terrible choices and forcing someone else to bear the weight. How on earth is it in the best interests of the market and retail investors if they can control both the lower limit, and upper limit, of the price of stocks that they themselves stand to benefit from the shorting of? Or at very least, if not directly control it, manipulate the market towards those inclinations. They seek to propose a rule that quite simply says that "If we mess up and the market is destabilized as a result of us messing up, we seek to mitigate our own personal losses while placing the onus of our mistakes onto participants of the free market." They claim that the money and securities they earn is reinvested into other securities to boost and maintain a healthy economy, but in reality it seems like a bunch of litigation to protect and minimize their own losses, seeing as they don't care about the absolutely utter destruction and downward trends of any security that they aggressively naked short under the guise of "lending securities and reinvesting into other securities" while the largest participants of such practices have doubled, tripled, quadrupled their personal wealth. In short, and pardon my language: This is bullshit. Absolutely bullshit. Their malpractice is what is causing these conditions where "fire sales" may erupt. They understood this when they sought to multiply their own wealth, which comes at the price of destabilizing and allegedly putting the economy at risk. It is them who should be held accountable, it is their practices which should be outlawed, and they should not be given a shield when their greed has allowed such a situation to come to light. Reject this.