October 18, 2021
This rule is very concerning to me as a retail investor - this places too much power in one person's hands to halt ANY security from trading without a democratic decision process / without having to answer to anyone for their reasoning. If trading is halted in specifics securities, how can one enter a futures contract with any confidence (especially in meme stocks) that the security won't be halted before their call / put land in the money?
As a retail investor, my faith in the market is at an all time low. This just further shifts more power into the hands of the elite to be used as a possible bludgeon against retail investors. The ability for one person to halt trading in a security without restriction, is not good for the market as a whole. As rules continue to come in like this, which only continue to consolidate the balance of a rigged market towards those already holding it, I become less inclined to put my money into such a corrupt system. If SEC does not take protecting retail investors seriously, we will flock to other venues to invest our money (see crypto, NFTs, etc). Why not gamble there on the edge of legality when we know that the stock markets have been legally been crafted against our interests.
One simply asks the question after an 18 month pandemic - why this rule? and why now?