I remember etrade charging something like $19.95 per trade not the number of shares. I remember in 1998 Scottrade launched $7 commission trading. When online commissions were $20-$30 per 100 shares and what broker was that?
No, they can all go on free welfare: Free healthcare for all, free food for all, free housing for all. He may also borrow from Andrew Yang: Free $1000 a month for all. Free cars? Not yet, that starts on his second term.
I’m from the U.K. we just had our own election with a crazy Marxist. He got so desperate towards the end he offered something free every day. Offered free broadband, even the other socialists were like ‘err nationalised broadband...I better delete my search history’. Thankfully he got destroyed at the ballot box so not everyone buys fantasy pledges. Sadly millions still do.
Transaction tax is a tax on someone who is too old to find a job but saved some money to supplement their income by participating in capital markets. The older people are usually people with money and they will have to pay for Bernie's freebies.
IMHO it's going to be about getting it into the democratic platform so that it becomes a party issue. Velocity is in the HFT community and this will be the primary target - retail is small beans compared to HFT and lots of institutions would mind HFT dying and retail getting muted.
FFT is per transaction, whether it's one transaction or 10000 transactions in a day. No way to distinguish between them.