The modification/cancellation fees are nonsense in a two-direction auction style market. The prices will move up or down. This rule fundamentally take away the equal free will/ability of common investors to participate the markets. Do not think the markets are pities given by some exchanges, market makers, and brokers. It is the result of fair equal-opportunity competition. The federal securities and exchanges laws have made it very clear. Without our participation, they die sooner or later. And by avoiding participating with all these some evil crooked rules including the PDT rules surrounding us, we will prevail longer than the exchanges, market maker, and brokers. Think!
qdz, I'm trying to improve your letter to the SEC about cancel fees, I also think that cancel fees are illegal, and there are some things about this that involve: 1) free visibility of customers' orders and market manipulation; 2) logging of all order cancels; 3) reliability of order cancels; 4) amount of the cancel fee. 5) guarantee for brokers/dealers. For 3) I mean that if they want to impose fee on cancels, they MUST trace these cancel and overall GUARANTEE them (the cancel) like other executions. This is really important. For 4), about the amount, now it is 1.20$, but could be 5$ or more in the future. There should be a limit on this. For 5), even from the side of brokers/dealers they are not guaranteed about the fee structure: I mean, the PSE or the AMEX could charge 2 millions USD to a broker, without presenting any cancellations evidence. This is very scary.