Recently, with the sec and the ape community, there's been a big outcry, for where is the sec? What are they doing? We want answers and we would like you to look into reason x reason why reason z all these happenings. It seems absolutely crazy. Well, i'm right! There with you, i am right there with you. I understand that it seems like if we uncovered the amount of stuff we have in the past year.

Imagine if we have even more time in shining a light and illuminating the various downfalls of our current market structure and just some of the things that prove that it's very much a tilted game. It totally is a tilted game and one year into fighting for being more of an equitable market. That's what we're looking for. I think there's been emotional highs and lows of like okay: are we making headway? Are we not making headway that type of a thing, especially when just the process the wheels of justice are very slow? Well, i want to share an interesting thing that just came out today related to the sec particular gary gensler, the chairman of the sec, and it's actually making me feel a little bit more confident in the way things are progressing, and i dare say this guy might Be on our side now i know i know that's something crazy to say, but before i get into it, let me just explain this article we'll dive into it and we'll see if we're in agreement or maybe we're not, but really.

I think this could relate to some pretty positive news, so let me switch right over sec. Chief gary gensler wants to bring the public's trust back to the stock market and even to crypto, and that's a very, very important thing, and i think that's a very big thing like we're, seeing this not only in the markets but in the current political landscape. There's a massive lack of trust. I mean we also see it in mainstream media.

I think the quote-unquote average joe among all of them politics, the markets and mainstream media, for whatever has been going on as long as i've really been paying attention. The trust factor has done nothing but go down down down, so i get it. This is a very good speaking point and obviously time will tell of if he truly means it or not, but i want to get into some of the specifics here. We're going to go over the crypto part, but then i'm really going to dive in to some of this commentary about market structure, payment for overflow and market makers, and it's making me feel a little bit more confident in how this is all progressing.

Satoshi nakamoto the mysterious creator of bitcoin dreamed of a world where financial transactions and investing could occur without the need of a third party. According to the sec chairman, gary gensler nakamoto, fundamentally misunderstood how markets work. You know that might be fair, but before we get into more detail of it, i think it's more of we have so much distrust for the current middleman that we would rather just place our trust in these counterparties, especially that's going to be currently highlighted by the Functionality of blockchain um, so it's more of i i see kind of both points here, but it's more of okay. If we're not trusting these big banks, wall, street's politicians well, we'd rather put our trust in our fellow man, our fellow woman, opposed to these, like third-party intermediaries, financial finance is ultimately about trust and the official sector has to roll to help instill the trust through a Set of rules on disclosure, anti-fraud and anti-manipulation that just sounds like typical stuff out of the sec rule book recently in the sphere of crypto.

It all came down to block fight, one of the biggest fines ever 100 mil block five um. This all relates to their high interest rate payments in exchange for deposits of cryptocurrencies, so this is about their high-yield account block fine, neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing, but agreed to pay a hundred mil uh a record fine for a crypto company. This just came out earlier this week that activity centralized on those platforms. They need the investor protection, the market, integrity and anti-manipulation.

We're hearing a lot about this anti-manipulation and i understand how that could be uh frustrating jarring to all of you, because that's what we're trying to get like a particular light shown on in the world of like really stocks equities, particularly the functionality of payment for order Flow market makers, uh, manipulative shorting - that type of thing - i think the problem is right. Now the public isn't well protected and there's a lot of folks who are going to get hurt. That might be fair, and i would understand i'm right there with you of saying. Well, wait you're, the guy who's supposed to be doing the protecting like what are you talking about here, but as you're about to see right here.

This is more of the crypto talk at the end, um uh there's some commentary that i think is going to make. You feel a little bit better um and obviously block fight. Just took this massive fine and he's saying other exchanges. Crypto changes should remain on notice, we'll continue to pursue enforcement actions based on the facts and the laws wherever that takes us.

Cryptocurrency is just one market in which gensler hopes to nurture america's trust. He also remains focused on reforming the plumbing of the u.s stock market and bringing it to more transparency and competition, which he says, will lower costs for retail investors. This is where it's about to get interesting, and mostly most likely this, like you listening right now. This is the part where your ears might want to perk up because um this is literally exactly what we're talking about.

A primary concern for the sec chairman is the rapid growth of so-called dark markets for stocks. Talking about ats's, that's dark pools and wholesale market makers. We already know some hardcore facts here: 90 of retail trades 90 to 95, do not get executed on a lit exchange. If they're not going to the new york stock exchange, they're not going to the nasdaq they're not going to iex, they are most likely going to sit down if they're not going there, they're, probably going to virtue most of retail, don't end up on dark pools, but Most, almost all of them end up off exchange.

You have off exchange, which is atss, aka, dark pools and then market makers. Those two together is off exchange training. The lion's share of off exchange trading is market makers. Think citadel securities.

The issue with this - and this is from the backed up by the statement of the former president of the new york stock exchange, stacey cunningham. She has said that so much off exchange trading. It really hurts price discovery, because the system is like this, and this article gets a little bit more into it all this off exchange trading, the prices that we're seeing there are based on what we see on the lit exchanges. So it's kind of like you're on the outside of the bubble.

Looking into it, i'm saying: okay, that's what the price is, so we're going to execute it here when in reality, if we were fair competition competing in a linux change. Well, that's better price discovery because you're not on the bubble. Looking in and being like, okay, that's the price! That's what will execute it here. You're, not you're, not getting the same price discovery.

That's a very, very key point first brought up. Well, i'm sure other people have brought it up, but recently it was brought up by the former president of the new york stock exchange. Stacey cunningham check it out so anyway, the sec and the general public don't know how much about these orders as they do on a lit exchange. Obviously, there's a lack of transparency.

Orders do not inform the nbbo the national investment and offer quotes against which the order quality is benchmarked. When just under half of the market goes to wholesalers or dark pools, then the investing public says that limited transparency it's harder to have the confidence. So that's one of our projects. He said adding that the mbbo is an incomplete or even false, measuring rod right now.

So let me break that down to layman's terms, market makers, particularly virtue and citadel securities. What they're going to say is: hey we're actually giving people a price improvement and then they're talking about the nbbo, the national best bid, the national best offer they're like this is what it is and a lot of our orders get executed within that. So that's good. The issue here is because they have successfully segmented the entire retail trading public off of the lid exchange.

What that has done. It has worsened the nbbo, so they're saying hang on. Let's like make our benchmark measurement awful and then hey look we're slightly better than that. So it's a win-win when in reality, if we didn't segment the entire retail training public, that measurement stick wouldn't be so bad.

There are various studies that this the effect of it has widened the nbbo by 20 to 25, which in reality when you're talking about pension funds, etfs that widen bid in the course of a trading year that can cost billions and billions of dollars. So what this is is it's kind of a red-hairing argument of when they're like hey, we're good we're, giving everyone a better price when in reality, it's better to a measurement stick that they made worse, so that i know it's a little bit complicated. But it's worthwhile to wrap our head around and what's cool about. It is genzler understands that.

So when you have a ceo of one of these market makers, go on tv, they're, gon na spout that off and it's a little bit, intellectually dishonest. But what's so cool about this is gary gensler fully understands that argument and he's not gon na, let them or hopefully he's not gon na. Let them get away with it, but i'm at least happy that he's not taking the bait of that argument. Gensler also suggested that the sec could propose rules that require greater transparency around payment for order flow, the practice of a broker exclusively sending your orders to a retail wholesaler, aka citadel securities virtu i've asked staff how we can ensure greater competition so that, if, by somebody Places a market order on one of these brokerage apps.

There is real-time order by order competition. Remember, there's no competition when it's exclusively going to one player, if you're trading on the likes of robinhood trading on the likes of weeble this when you buy or sell citadel, is going to play the other side of it. If you're buying they're selling to you, if you're selling they're buying off of you, it's not going to a lid exchange, you are not competing in a free and open market when you're playing with one other guy and all their prices are what they're seeing from the Bubble looking in because it's all segmented off of a lit exchange, greater transparency around payment for order flow could be a compromise between proponents of the practice, which argue it has helped create commission free trading and contributed to the overall decline in bid-ask spreads and critics of The practice who argue it creates a conflict of interest that inevitably harms retail investors. You know so they're talking about, let's not get rid of payment for order flow, and this is the one part that, like i'm a little bit upset with and i'm assuming you are too, i don't care about more transparency on payment for overflow.

If we're doing the dance, let's do the full tango, let's get rid of it. I don't need more transparency. I already know they're screwing over the retail trading public. I know they're screwing over all of wall street and everyone engaging with it.

I don't need more information to know that i'm getting screwed, i just want to stop being screwed, so for them to say. Oh transparency will make me happy. No, it's not going to make me happy. I want the solution fixed.

I find this to be a little bit irksome if you will, because in may of 2021, gary gensler himself went in front of whatever congressional panel and he was talking about robin hood and their relationship with citadel and what he said. I can't remember it verbatim, but the overall vibe of it was saying robin hood explicitly went out of its way to accept higher payment for order flow in return for worse quality execution, and excuse me, in fact it was so bad that he said literally. If you went to a commission-based brokerage, it would have been better off. That's how bad the quality of execution was.

So for him to say the critics of the practice who argue it creates a conflict of interest that inevitably harms retail investors he's one of those critics. He has stated that himself, he has said: oh yeah, no um, it was really bad. He said that in front of congress, so he's literally one of those critics, but this is where i like the conclusion of it and make makes me feel like there's a silver lining to this situation. Our statute had the word competition added 20 times and in 1996 congress did it again and added it another 15 or 20 times.

We are also a competition efficiency agency. You know that might not seem like anything. We are also a competition efficiency agency. The fact that he felt the need to put that in there tells me that he's about to come down on these people because anything about this situation.

It hampers competition. It increases the fragility of our market structure for him to go out of his way to say that he's, i think, going to use this sentiment of like actually hey, do what you want, but actually this isn't good for competition. So i think he's using this as kind of a pillar to stand on and be like nope. My direction is to get it as efficient as i can.

This is an inefficient practice, and because of that, i have to get rid of it to me. It's another potential piece of ammo another bullet in his gun of how he can handle this overall situation for us. Maybe i'm looking a little bit too much into it, but in reality some of the things we've recently seen come out of gensler's mouth. It sounds like he's saying as much as he can without like stepping over a particular line or showing his full hand of how he wants to play the situation.

But with this i know, there's been emotional highs, emotional lows and i'm here to tell you that i think within a short time frame in the next couple months, this next handful of months. The rumor mill is going and i think that there's going to be quite a bit of development and i think, on capitol hill, the sec and on the political stage, there's about to be a knock down bloody back alley, brawl related to this exact subject matter with It feel free to check out dave. Lauer's twitter he's had some very, very interesting points on it and i think everyone should dive into it, but just to give you a little bit of an idea of what i'm talking about, i put out something on my twitter. If you haven't already even our boy john stewart, you probably saw this video a bit ago mentioning the word.

Gamestop give this a watch, but overall the tides are turning, and my ask of you is there's going to be a certain day a certain week where to show all the people in power that were actually serious our voice is gon na have to be heard. I don't know when it is, but i am telling you this and i'm telling you this right now. There's gon na be a particular day where something happens, and it's gon na be excessively critical and important that we have to show how serious we are about that. So my ask to you: is, when this day comes and you're gon na know, because it's gon na blow up all over social media, that you stand up tall and make sure your voice is heard, because this needs to end i'm telling you i get it.

This is one of many many things of how our world is quote: unquote, not fair, but i'm telling you we got to start somewhere. We might as well arbitrarily pick this aspect of the stock market and see where we can go from that. So i humbly ask when the day comes, make sure your voice is heard, because we are fighting for you, we're fighting for me. We're fighting for just the average guy who average girl, who maybe just wasn't dealt the best hand on the day that they were born.

But let's see if we can make things a little bit more equitable, you.