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Tyler Durden
As part of the SEC's process to fix the broken market, it is currently soliciting public feedback on a variety of issues. Why it is doing so, we don't know - after all anything that does not conform to the SEC's preconception of what the most lucrative market to the SEC's recent batch of clients (see earlier news about an SEC director going to HFT specialist Getco) is, just ends up in the shredder anyway. At this point to believe that the SEC will do anything remotely in the interest of investors instead of millisecond speculators, is naive beyond compare. Nonetheless, while combing through some of the recent public responses on the topic of market structure, we came across the following presentation by $34 billion Southeastern Asset Management (SAM), titled "Comment & Analysis on Equity Market Structure" which must be brought to the attention of all those who have the temerity to defend HFT as an altruistic source of liquidity provisioning. SAM's 4 points are simple, and laid out very easily so that even the mildly retarded public, pardon, GETCO servants at the SEC can understand it: "1) The intent of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as provided for in its preamble is being twisted and abused for the benefit of gamblers and to the detriment of investors. 2) The markets are not "fair and honest", 3) Securities prices are presently "susceptible to manipulation and control, and the dissemination of such prices gives rise to excessive speculation, resulting in sudden and unreasonable fluctuations in the prices of securities. 4) The preceding three issues are fixable by the SEC." Let's dig in.
Before we get into the meat of the complaint, one of SAM's primary concerns, is that the US stock market has become the functional equivalent of China: trading intellectual property is routinely abused, stolen and used against its very creator.
