The article is pretty vague on the implications, but the big exchange groups enjoy extortionate profit margins - data fees making up a big part of that. They're seeing margins of 50% when it should be 10%. Anything which hamstrings their monopolistic practices is a plus.
I always wondered why CME data fees were so much less than ICE? Does ICE cater to institutional traders or something?
I would hope the outcome would be cheaper and higher quality of market data for us little guys so the playing field is even more level. Seriously the exchanges' arguments against SEC are pretty lame. And hopefully this would eventually branch into the abolishing of payment for order flow which is actually something pioneered by Bernie Madoff. Go figure!
And honestly it should be free. If they had operated like ECN's like Island which is with open book, the data would be free.
'ajacobson - What do you expect the end result will be?" Higher costs for private fees and some competition for SIP dissemination. I doubt there will be trickle down to small investor in the near future.
"Since then, exchanges have created faster, more sophisticated proprietary data feeds that compete against the public feeds." Can someone who knows this clarify this sentence for me? The public feed is: BBO from participating exchanges, trade ticks and full book - AFAIU. What would the "more sophisticated proprietary data feed" contain that the public feed wouldn't?
But then again, I don't think this will make much of a difference unless the SEC also regulate the exchanges regarding trading fees. What the exchange loses from the data fee it will simply make up by raising the trading fee. Just consider how many times CME raised the fee in the last 5 years.