Mar. 15, 2023
March 15, 2023 The rapid eroding of trust in what you claim as a \"fair and free\" market system is compounded when you make rules that are- 1. Not enforced 2. Riddled with exceptions 3. Overly complicated This is a simple rule at its core- Prohibition of Conflict of Interests. It seems like this should have been addressed at some level, somewhere in market rules and laws previously, yet somehow here we are attempting to approve an obvious and critical tenant of a \"free and fair\" market system. Ostensibly, this means that up until this point, the market was full of conflicted interest trading activity. So at least we have decided to bring forth a rule proposal that would establish a baseline of ethical conduct, at a time when the world has been watching how biased and manipulated the market has been. By not having this fundamental rule in place as a corner stone of regulation, the conflicted actions of market participants have gone unchecked and allowed them to line their pockets with ill gotten gains taken from the same people who your mandate is to protect. To add insult to injury, this rule proposal then endeavors to create loopholes for those same market participants to continue their conflicted behaviour through these exceptions. Risk-mitigating hedging activities Bona fide market-making activities and Liquidity commitments. None of the above are valid reasons to allow conflicted trading activities. They are simply their to allow the continued fleecing of retail investors under the guise of \"market making\". What kind of a \"free and fair\" market regulator allows the card dealers to stack the deck, deal from the bottom, and mark the cards? Yet the SEC has the nerve to make videos, spending tax payer dollars to disparage retail traders while they run a dirty casino without basic guard rails in place to keep the market participants from stealing from the public. No more exceptions, no more exemptions, no more hiding in the dark pools, and certainly no more half-measured regulation.