May 15, 2024
Dear ladies and gentlemen, I am writing you as a retail investor from Germany, who regularly invests into the American market. My main reasons for that are the stability of the market and my fair rights to participate in it. Being that, I appreciate the additional consideration and opportunity extended by SR-OCC-2024-001 Release No 34-100009 to comment on SR-OCC-2024-001 34-99393 entitled “Proposed Rule Change by The Options Clearing Corporation Concerning Its Process for Adjusting Certain Parameters in Its Proprietary System for Calculating Margin Requirements During Periods When the Products It Clears and the Markets It Serves Experience High Volatility” The SEC’s grounds for disapproval are fully supported by me as I as well have several concerns about the OCC rule proposal. From my perspective it threatens the very basic concept of a fair, orderly and efficient market. Also, I highly disapprove of the lack of transparency in this process. Many details of this proposal are redacted, which prevents me as a retail investor to fully review and comment on it. The goal of the visible parts of the named proposal appear to be designed to protect Clearing Members from realizing risks of costly and bad trades. This would be possible by changing margin requirements on the spot “in times of stressed market conditions”. That part alone is putting the stability of the American financial system at risk. Margin requirements are an essential tool to secure markets from collapsing. Today, many Clearing Members are insufficiently capitalized and over-leveraged in a way, that a failure of one member could cause a domino effect of defaults. This risk has to be taken care of by not changing margin requirements on the spot. If the SEC was not to disapprove the proposed rule, I would highly consider investing in other markets in the future. The United States of America need to ensure a fair, orderly and efficient market if it is welcoming foreign investors into its stock markets. Best Regards, Bastian Meinig.