Jun. 7, 2022
As a retail investor acting on my own behalf, I fully support this rule and order to remove GME and AMC from ATS dark pool trading. It has been shown that both stocks are illiquid and hard to borrow, so to fully honor the idea of “free markets” the natural laws of supply and demand and proper price discovery should be allowed to take place. ATS dark pool trading significantly hinders price discovery. To give a simple example of how monopolized trading is… let’s say I owe a hedge fund and market making company. If my hedge fund is shorting a certain stock, it would be in my financial best interest to market make such stocks in dark pools to avoid buys going on lit markets. I could then “unethically” route all sell orders through the lit exchanges and create manufactured sell pressure. Allowing the abuse of dark pools to continue provides a financial incentive to “break the rules” and in such a “self reporting” industry…. It’s hard to believe it doesn’t already take place, when even the “reported” numbers hint at it. As a retail investor I feel the cards have been stacked against me for too long. This rule should be passed, and done so swiftly. As further confirmation to my point, I expect hedge funds and market makers will vehemently fight the implementation of such rule change. And this alone proves that the current way things are are in their favor, not retails. Sincerely, Matthew Cincotta -A concerned retail investor