Jan. 5, 2023
January 5, 2023 Fair and transparent markets are fundamental expectations that investors have when utilizing broker-dealers. Here are my thoughts as an individual investor: -Competition for orders is critically important to ensuring that the best execution can be implemented, and the parties involved in the trade are getting exposure to a competitive group of market participants -Internalization and trades executed in dark pools are not impacting the NBBO and preventing true price discovery -Internalizing appears to benefit market makers much more than individual investor trying to buy or sell a security -There should be no exemptions for market makers, broker-dealers with high or low volume, small- or large-block trades, or otherwise -There is often the argument for guaranteeing liquidity. However, a fair and orderly market is not one, where everything is liquid. If there are no apples available for sale today (or Japanese Bonds for example), then none should be magically conjured and sold. This does not facilitate price discovery, especially, if there is no true oversight over reducing the number of \"conjured apples\" back down to zero. Thank you for providing individual investors, like myself, the opportunity provide input on the proposal. Thank you for your time.