I much prefer pennies. I use to hate paying a quarter to get in and a quarter to get out. The stock would have to move .50 my way before I could even break even - although back then I would have still had $30 in commissions to cover. Decimals and ECN's are the best thing that ever happened for my trading!
Hey Eldredge, how much do you trade? Are you more of a swing trader, or trading tens of thousands of shares a day? I think that trading with a longer term time frame would make pennies more favorable. Just curious.
Eldrige , is you had to pay 25 cents each way to get in and out of a stock , you were either playing the wrong stock or you did not know what you were doing. Decimals suck . I will take fractions any day .
Decimals let the market determine what the spread should be. Spread should be no wider than what the market demands. It is not the job of the SEC to make more money for the exchanges or market makers who would be the prime beneficiaries of this kind of change. I think the exchanges are trying to deflect the well deserved criticism that has come their way and are trying to encourage the SEC to look elsewhere - at hedge funds,decimals etc. and not at their rule breaking.
People were protesting when the market went to decimals. People are protesting when the market goes back to fractions. I guess people just hate change As for me - I don't give a sneeze. I traded with fractions, trading with decimals, will convert back with no problem. Takes a week or a month to adjust. Vad
Let me see, ISLD has better executions than NYSE or AMEX. ISE is better than CBOE, PHLX. So what does the great capitalist system do, screw the small business person if favor of protecting large monopolies. Maybe we could review regulation FD and the rules on insider trading and shortselling. Then we would really be getting somewhere. Capitalism for the Poor and Socialism for the Rich, I love it.
There would be more liquidity and more transparency with nickels as the orders that are now "hiding" or not being shown for fear of being pennied would now come out and be displayed. To get a 10 cent move all you need is two ticks not ten. The entire point of a centralized exchange is to provide liquidity for buyers and sellers. Now we have a trend toward fragmentation and a disincentive to post. Nickels will not prevent the fragmentation, but they will add depth to the markets.
While it sounds rediculous, allowing insider trading could actually make the market more efficient. Assuming, as a cynic like myself does, that people are trading with inside info now then allowing everyone to do it would then be reflected in the prices of the stocks quicker and more efficiently. From an efficient market standpoint, right now not all information is reflected in a stock's price. If insider trading was allowed, stocks would move to their true value quicker and more efficiently. As an investor or trader, if you assume others know more than you then you could decide to play or not. Now you assume there is no insider trading and are wrong.