UY
So you think you're in the good hands of Big Guys who know what you need to know like Balmer? Consider Levitt:
"Basic economics tells us that the greater supply and demand that congregate in one place the more efficient the price-setting mechanism," said the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Arthur Levitt, in a speech at Columbia University in New York.
Levitt's remarks emphasised both the benefits and the potential regulatory problems posed by recent technological changes and the proliferation of different ways to trade stocks.
In particular, Levitt urged exchanges to open the "archaic" system that links their stock orders and quotes, Intermarket Trading System, to ECNs.
He also asked the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to scrap its Rule 390, a requirement that prevents NYSE member firms to trade Big Board stocks that were listed before 1979 outside the exchange during market hours.
"Now it's time to ask ourselves: Is there a valid justification for a rule that appears to be more a barrier than a benefit?" he said. "And how could such an anti-competitive rule be sustained should the NYSE become a for-profit corporation?."
The NYSE declined to comment on Levitt's proposal to scrap the rule. But John Coffee, a professor at Columbia University's law school, said Levitt's comments were "a strong message that Rule 390 is dead or dying."
I should like to remind that amateur that Rule 390 was instituted for the reason he stated in his opening remarks. Specifically, "the greater supply and demand that congregate in one place the more efficient the price-setting mechanism". That surely contradicts the congregation of price at the one place, the NYSE, rather than in abstract and unknown lands, as stipulated by Rule 390. Before these modern kiddies are finished they'll have stock price setting in secret places. It is amazing indeed to watch as the illiterati take competition all the way around until they have anti-competition, and nowhere along the way can they see this happening. This era has hell to pay. Hell. |
