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Comment by rramdin | Hacker News Reader

Sanders lacks fundamental understanding of the stock market, indicated by his unsubstantiated refrain "the business model of Wall Street is fraud." First, there are already per-trade regulatory fees, so this isn't a novel idea. Second, this is necessarily a regressive tax: wider spreads mean worse prices for the ultimate owner of stocks; that tax is applied whether trades are retail (you and me), institutional (big Wall Street firms, i.e. IEX's clients), or HFT (small tech firms).

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Your reasoning seems to ignore the evidence in this article; there does seem to be a business model of fraud and, even if he did lack a fundamental understanding of the stock market, I would hope we could all agree that action needs to be taken to regulate and restrict these illegal practices. Perhaps it would not be the specific terms Sanders was describing, but unfortunately he was the only viable candidate that ostensibly wanted to do so.

> Your reasoning seems to ignore the evidence in this article; there does seem to be a business model of fraud

What evidence? Specifically, where do you see any evidence?

The article is filled with emotional appeals, doesn't quantify its "calculations", conflates queue size with a lack of liquidity, professes obvious and heavy-handed hero worship for Brad Katsuyama and IEX, and (to top it all off), claims that high frequency trading is front running.

Frankly, I'm shocked it was even published, even as far as op eds go. The article perpetuates the same tired FUD about high frequency trading that IEX continues to push out, and in doing so preempts reasonable discussion about the real negative externalities caused by HFT. The author either doesn't understand, or willfully misconstrues the way in which HFT operates.

The main criticism of HFT I have heard is that it makes life harder for institutional investors, which makes them less likely to take effort to invest well.

This article is a pretty transparent advertisement for IEX.

>Second, this is necessarily a regressive tax

You're putting your own ideas into his mouth. Nobody said anything about the fee being a flat fee, or that it would apply to every single trade in existence.

I'm saying this as a Sanders supporter, but maybe he should have been more specific and detailed about his proposals then. My two biggest frustrations with Sanders were 1) his inability to understand that it was going to take more than just mere backbone and higher taxes to reform wall street and 2) his foreign policy

>but maybe he should have been more specific and detailed about his proposals then.

I'll agree with you there, his proposals were very similar to Trump's in that they did not have much substance, just broad ideas.

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