Apr. 20, 2022
To whom it may concern, The proposal above is extremely short-sighted and will only serve to further alienate a rapidly expanding base of retail investors from US markets. I am highly disturbed by the content of this new proposed rule that would effectively allow for FTDs (Failure To Deliver) to continue and worsen, which can be abused by market makers and used in conjunction with illegal naked shorting and abusive dark pool trade routing to control and suppress the price on security trading. This does not in any way benefit investors and in fact could be extremely harmful. Please do not allow the SFTs (Security Financial Transactions) proposed in this rule to create new and potentially endless layers of can-kicking to be allowed, whereby the very real financial obligations of the FTDs get passed along instead of settled. I can see how it provides stability in the moment, but it also allows for abusive practices where market makers are never accountable for their failings. This is not acceptable and creates an opportunity to harm retail investors and it violates the tenets of a free and fair market. Retail investors such as myself make financial decisions based on publicly available information in an effort to improve our circumstances and to attempt to try and get ahead in life. When the SEC takes such a clear stance as this it shows that you are on the side of those that are already at an insurmountable advantage and it is extremely disheartening to see. How long before a significant portion of the American/International community withdraw their capital from your markets and seek other ways to grow their capital in a fair and equitable alternative? The writing is on the wall with the onset of emerging technologies and I think I can speak for many like-minded people in saying that there are enough of us to accomplish this successfully, with or without support from regulatory organisations such as yours. To that view I strongly implore the SEC to discard this proposal so that it can demonstrate to supportive international investors such as myself that it will stand on the right side of history. We want more transparency, not complex backdoor solutions that enable bad actors to escape their moral, fiduciary, and ethical responsibilities as market participants. I'm sure there is a majority of people working for and representing the SEC that share the same view and are similarly frustrated at such clearly one-sided proposals. Please backtrack on this. Yours faithfully, An overseas investor.