Feb. 9, 2024
I am a retail investor that have been in the market actively for the past years. On January 19, 2024 The Options Clearing Corporation has proposed changes to the current OCC’s policy. The power of control currently exhibited by the OCC has not been abused and has effectively worked in the past in time of high market volatility. The OCC may encounter isolated instances of volatility that should not implement automatic High Volatility Control Settings. This proposed rule change offers no reduction in risk control, but adds to greater long term risk. This rule change creates a greater risk in the future. This rule will encourage bad behavior through riskier bets because the rule would protect individuals with risky bets in a high volatility situation. The OCC maintains the ability to use global setting and has done so in the past for example March 9, 2020 through April 9, 2020 with the Covid-19 epidemic. Again, these controls were implemented January 27 2021for volatility-based products in connection with the market volatility caused by the so-called meme stock episode. I urge the the committee to vote NO on this proposal SR-OCC-2024-001. As an alternative a more appropriate change would be to increase margin requirements to assure all parties involved are responsible in the executions of trades of securities. Regards, Lowell Haney Lowell Haney lowell_jr_haney@yahoo.com