I agree this is being blown completely out of proportion. I can see if I was trading hundreds of thousands of shares that it would be a problem but to say the entire market is rigged is hogwash. Last year a lot of people stayed away because of their fears of losing a big chunk of their life savings so they kept their money in a bank account that might have paid them .25% instead of being in the market that fairly easily would have paid 25%. A guy that had $100,000.00 could have put 1% of his money in the market and made $250 or the same amount he would have made off of his entire savings at .25%. One of the hardest things to overcome in investing is paralysis. This is reinforcing that paralysis across a wide spectrum of society. The lord only knows what the political hacks are going to do with this.
This has always been about the institutional investors and never about the individual/retail investor. Lewis never claimed it was. Katsuyama never claimed it was. Absolutely nobody is saying the retail investor is being harmed. If they are they are making up their own premise because it’s not part of the actual discussion. Retail investor are sub 5% of the volume.