The Securities and Exchange Commission said Friday it will increase the fee it charges for stock market transactions to $46.80 per $1 million from $25.20 due to the declining dollar volume in equities markets. The agency said the new rate will take effect on April 1. (There's more to the story, but it was on DJ News, so I couldn't post the whole article)
That's outrageous! They already raised it not that long ago. Now they're raising it signifcantly. At a time when the markets and government NEED market investments and participation, it is extremely greedy (along with unfair) to further tax those participating in the markets!
Well, since DECIMALIZATION and THE PDT RULES have done so much to stabilize the market, they figured it was time to be rewarded..........
Is this the first thing they do after they vowed to protect investors? Yeah, do they only charge big players? And do they have exemption for small investors? Can we claim the fee for tax deduction? Now brokers will pass the fee to us. Who assure that they don't have a bite of income on it? $0.1 per sale?
By the way, please join me f8cking special interest groups, religious men and women, and their lobbies like PDT rules during the weekend. Thanks.
Really ? What a surprise for me. That's what I anticipated : "02-22-03 10:30 PM Higher fees, higher account, higher margin call, higher speed, higher taxes : prepare for that or you will be washed out like some french floor traders who didn't expect it. If you are swinger you won't feel too much affected but if you are scalper the difference can be huge." http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=208149#post208149
You nearly understand it: you are an intermediate for public taxation. They can't tax the public easily by direct mean so they ask the public to put their money in stock market that are amassed by speculators that are then taxed: they should be paid for this service for the administration
Well, I guess when there is a huge Federal or State deficit, the government will keep on increasing the taxes, service fees, etc. For example, the fine for traffic violation in NYC and the finger-printing fee at INS have been doubled too. The property taxes at NYC have been increased recently.
As for margin call read this article from Fallstreet.com http://www.fallstreet.com/feb1403.php Hike in Margin Rates Hammers Speculators Conspiracy or Coincidence? Originally developed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, âSPANâ software is designed to quantify (correlate) price to risk in the commodities markets. Apparently, and confirming this is not easy, NYMEX plugs contract data into this program to determine if margin requirements need to be changed. On Thursday February 5 at approximately 5:08 PM, NYMEX stated that âGold futures margins will be increased to $1,500 from $1,000 for members, member firms, and hedgers, and to $2,025 from $1,350 for speculative customers.â What these new margin requirements did â again, difficult to confirm (until today) - was force many small speculators out of the market because they could no longer maintain margin. As for the larger players â the commercials/hedgers -- margin is not that much of an issue when you have Greenspan in your corner.