March 14, 2022
As an individual investor who has no control over the routing of orders I place to purchase or sell securities, I find it reprehensible that market players have created a secondary marketplace that is unregulated, opaque, and designed to disadvantage the investing public to the benefit of these large market participants.
The SEC is laughed at by these participants, who trample on the ideals of the financial system knowing full well that any violation will take years to review- if ever- and will result in a fine which is pennies on the dollars they make by flouting the rules.
The existence of off-exchange pools and the ability to route substantially all trades through them at a controlled price is the very definition of market manipulation. And while I would like to see jail in the future of some of these participants, I would begrudgingly accept the pools being regulated, and enforced, out of existence.