Specifically - sell side prop traders. Edit: If you want to help a client by trading with him, getting his trade done, giving him what he wants, while taking on some risk yourself to fill his order, you now have to show, more than ever that you were doing the trade for the client, and not risking the banks money at all. Previously you could show a client a two way price, skew your quote in the direction you wanted to go as a prop trader / market maker, and get trades done that made sense for the client, and for the bank - ideally banking some p/l, and marking the trade to the same model you quoted off. Now you have to show that the trade was for the client, basically at the expense of the bank, maybe charging a fee to the client, rather than making him a price indicating what you're willing to do. Then if you do actually get the trade, the commission is assigned to a knuckle dragging sales trader, and the prop book is more or less p/l flat .. after that your trade is marked to a model dreamed up by an overseas quant who's more compliance guy than trader, and the reported mark to market is all over the shop. In essence, Frank Dodd is a t00l. It's made institutional trading feel like a kindergarten in many ways. The prop trader / market maker who's supposed to quote prices, is now quoting compliance voodoo prices, and everyone's confused.
Just get a bunch of marketing material for why you should hire EY to set up a bunch of expensive compliance training for you. Again, the fact that no-one has been able to produce a single concrete example of how this impacts a real person is telling. And I'd maintain that if you have to do hours of compliance training for each of your employees on how to put your customer's best interests first you either a. Bought the EY scare tactic that you're in huge danger (most probable) b. Are such a shady company that I'm glad you're incurring extra cost and hope you do exit the business. To be clear, we're not talking esoteric requirements here. We're talking not recommending the S&P500 index mutual fund with a 2% front load and 1% annual expense ratio, which you as the investment advisor get a kickback on, as opposed to the Vanguard equivalent. And it's because large numbers of investment advisors were doing exactly the above, and the industry utterly failed to self regulate it, that we have this rule in the first place. How in the world can you honestly be against this unless you are one of the self serving "advisors" seeking to continue ripping people off?
Again, cry me a river that a trader at GS has to work a tiny bit harder for their bonus. How is that killing/crushing/destroying...pick your hyperbolic word....anyone? Sure it's a tiny pain in the ass for that poor trader that impacts his/her bonus not at all, and as pointed out before the banks seem to be doing just fine. In case you didn't remember, 2008 caused huge real pain for large numbers of real people, Dodd Frank isn't materially impacting anyone. I'd hate to say we should repeal a law meant to protect millions from losing their jobs and homes because it makes traders feel like they're in kindergarten. BTW, how can you be a prop trader at a bank post Volcker rule?
Happy to be corrected on specifics. "You don't know what you're talking about" is a pretty information free response.