Come on SEC, Flash Is the Best You Can Do?

So now we see what the Securities and Exchange Commission can act with alacrity on: flash. Yeah, something, frankly, as insignificant as flash. Yet they moved with lightning speed on it. The irony of it.

In my 30 years of writing and trading I have seen the individual investor been abused nine ways to Sunday, carrion for the little guys, the sharpsters, the gamers, the bookies, everyone who can wring a commission or a gross credit out of the guy. From front-running -- and I mean real front-running, where you can make money -- to cherry-picking, I have watched the individual be gaffed and prayed the SEC would take action.

I have seen products created that abuse individual investors and have gotten the blessing of the commission simply because this commission is so unsophisticated that it didn't even understand how Bernard Madoff purported to make money, because if it had the SEC would have known it was a lie immediately.

This is an SEC that has embraced financials from scoundrels, approved any changes that leveled the playing field in favor of the shorts like the elimination of the uptick rule or not prosecuting naked shorting. It is an SEC that just gave Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Trade Now) executives a $33 million slap on the wrist for hiding $3 billion in bonuses, a settlement a federal judge simply couldn't live with.

So what do they move on instantly? What did they move on after a professorial treatise or two and a New York Times "investigation?"

Flash!

Like it means even a millisecond in slowness vs. actual multiple seconds a few years ago. We are in a world in which every year we have gotten more price improvement than the year before. We have a part of the market THAT IS WORKING, THAT ISNT BROKEN, and that's what they move with alacrity on?

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