Mar. 30, 2023
Good morning Ms. Countryman, This is my second comment letter regarding this Order Competition Rule. I fully support this proposal, and I am thrilled to see how many other household investors have written comments also supporting this proposal. What is telling is how strongly established industry players oppose this rule. They claim to represent retail interests, but that is absurd. They simply want to protect the status quo of our current obscure, complex, and unfair market structure, because they benefit greatly from it, at the expense of hundreds of thousands of individual investors. We (the SEC, household investors, and institutions) are all in a watershed moment. Household investors have awoken to find that the notions they had about our capital markets are not true. Even the most basic economic principle such as the effect of supply and demand on the price of a security no longer holds true, as 'bona fide' market makers can abuse their privilege to naked short shares, thus increasing the supply and placing a lead blanket on any stock. Failure to deliver shares is also a rampant problem. There are many such examples, but I digress. The point of this letter is to show my support for your organization, and encourage you to continue to fix our broken markets so it can work well for everybody, not just the biggest players on Wall Street. Please continue to listen to household investors, and please continue to be skeptical of any institutions who claim to be a proponent or a mouthpiece for retail (household) investors. Thank you for your time. -- Max Long Content Editor