Apr. 20, 2022
To whom it May Concern: As a retail investor 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, which is anathema to the entire purpose of the SECs very existence. Please do not allow 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 our rights for a free and fair market. The manipulation needs to come to an end. Please remove this proposed rule and furthermore please do not try to propose something similar again in the future, as iterations of this have been rejected in the past and continue to be rejected by educated investors every time they resurface. What a colossal waste of time, mine and yours, to continue to have to repeat this song and dance over and over again. The mission of the SEC is to look out for the well-being of investors such as myself, so I would propose that you direct your attention to doing so. This would best be accomplished by banning Payment For Order Flow which is inherently harmful to retail investors and which unfairly benefits Market Makers and brokers who do not have investors best interest in mind. Another worthy target for your attention would be to shut down the abusive use of dark pools by market makers such as Citadel which has been used to undermine the true value of securities traded by retail investors and to suppress price discovery. Thank you in advance for your timely attention to this matter, and please live up to your obligations and help the investors from predatory behavior by financial o 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. Whether the large Wall Street firms/other financial intermediaries that lobby for rules such as this like it or not there is a growing number of independent investors both within the US and outside that are becoming more financially literate. The fact is that rule proposals such as this that serve to make financial markets less transparent will no longer be accepted without a significant loss of trust in the institutions that regulate the market such as the SEC. 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 its tax-paying country men and 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 investor