Wall Street and numerous hedge funds has lined up against SEC chair Gary Gensler to overhaul the US stock trading system

Wall Street and numerous hedge funds has lined up against SEC chair Gary Gensler to overhaul the US stock trading system, per CNBC.

“These proposals are potentially crucial steps towards addressing the issues we saw in January 2021 and making the markets more fair for retail investors,” Better Markets has said.

“SIFMA’s members believe the order competition rule should be withdrawn,”  Kenneth Bentsen, President and CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), said.

“The SEC failed to make a valid case for doing it, and it will not only be disruptive to the market, it will hurt the stakeholders the SEC purports to help,” Bentsen said. “In addition, the cost/benefit analysis done by the SEC is flawed. Several academic research studies show that this proposal, if enacted, would raise costs for retail investors. The U.S. equity markets are incredibly efficient and resilient and investors, especially retail investors, have the greatest ease of access, lowest cost of trading and best execution in history. There is intense competition in the marketplace both upstream and downstream, especially with regard to retail investors. This flawed proposal will do more harm than good, and it is based on data that does not reflect today’s market.”

Nasdaq has also registered its opposition to the proposal, saying “the SEC risks too much by solely focusing on qualified auctions."

“This latest effort to order competition threatens to create disorder in the capital markets, the functioning of which is so important to the rest of our economy,” Hester Peirce said.

“Ultimately, it’s going to end up, unfortunately, sadly, probably in litigation [if Gensler] decides to go down this road,” Virtu CEO Doug Cifu said per CNBC.