macrocephalopod

precisely. what if all the orders were lit?!? then there could never be price improvement? i dont care about slippage or any of that nonsense

It’s just theoretical discussion, we obviously can’t know what would happen if we moved every single order to a lit exchange and maybe it would be worse who knows

just a series of moving goalposts with no one wanting to suggest real changes when they could just quietly do what they want and see if it makes them money too

I mean sure, you have to invoke counterfactuals and talk about opportunity costs and it gets a bit abstract but otoh ... opportunity costs are real? I don’t have an easy answer to the question “would markets be better if we put everything on a single l exchange” but it seems like

a question that it’s worth asking. Throwing up your hands and saying there’s nothing we can do, the issues are too theoretical and abstract, is not an answer we would accept for most other questions.

i think that this greatly depends on the definition of "better". better for whom?

I guess better for the end users of markets (investors and companies that need to sell stock). Appreciate that MMs need to get paid too but if they got paid a bit less for providing the same quality of service (or paid the same for better service) wouldn’t that be an improvement?

In the same way that if a health insurance company figures out how to charge less premiums but make the same profit that is a net win for society.