New Stock Exchange Is a Bad Trip Down Memory Lane
A member-owned market is the wrong response to rising fees.
Nostalgia should stay in the past.
Photographer: OFF/AFP/Getty Images
Often, despite nostalgia, memory lanes don’t lead us back to better places, just the same wrong turns we’ve made before. That would be the case with Wall Street’s latest proposal to improve the stock market. The Securities and Exchange Commission should see it for the unsensible stroll it is.
On Monday, a group of the biggest banks and brokerage firms formed a new U.S. stock market. The founders include banks Morgan Stanley and UBS Group and high-frequency trading firms like Virtu Financial Inc. The group has come up with $70 million to kick-start the market, which it is calling the Members Exchange. The founders hope the market will be up and running by early this year, but they would need SEC approval to become an official exchange, which can take months or even years.