This article layers a ridiculous conclusion on top of misunderstood observations. What's it advocating, really? Bring back the "good old days" of high fees?
The only area I see in which traders could harm value investing would be in using illegal insider information, which of course is already illegal (and prosecuted, thankfully). And I see no mention of that in this article. And besides, insider trading could be done just as easily by a "value investor" as by a "trader".
Quote from patchie:
As the deadline neared, shares of GM did a funny thing: They kept trading at more than $1 each. They didn't disappear.
Some people think that the Feds pumping billions into a defunct company can magically keep its equity afloat. May be right, may be wrong, I personally wouldn't touch it. And the point is...???
The traders control volume, and whoever controls the volume controls the price.
Maybe in the very short term, but short-term traders can't control the long-term. Or have value investors suddenly become very short term? Then that's their own issue, and has nothing to do with traders.
The old notion that profitable companies with good growth prospects should have rising share prices -- and that failures like GM should be gone, or at least trading in the pennies -- is history.
Uhh...NOPE.
For all the success markets and regulators have had in slashing trading costs, those reforms have inadvertently hurt small investors.
The reforms that hurt small investors have nothing to do with trading -- but it has a lot to do with banks and the connected overconsumption at all levels.
As spreads on the exchange have shrunk, trading margins squeezed middlemen on every transaction. The best way to offset those losses has been to increase the number of transactions. Brokers have been happy to step up to heavy traders such as hedge funds and provide margin loans. Those loans not only increase volume, but carry more lucrative fees.
Wrong again. The former middlemen were forced into early retirement. And if those heavy-trading hedge funds aren't profitable, they'll be gone, too. Harsh, but that's the reality of a more efficient environment -- unlike the one that the author apparently yearns for, where high fees buffered big firm profits ad infinitum.
Reduce spreads benefit long-term investors. If they buy and hold, they pay a lot less to buy. Or should we be yearning for the days of 1/4 point spreads?
The special attention paid to big traders doesn't only distort the market, it leaves fewer resources for investors with longer time horizons. During the last year, about 2,000 sell-side research analysts -- the guys paid to inform investors -- have exited the business, according to an earlier report in The Wall Street Journal.
The main job of a sell-side analyst was to generate investment banking revenue, not to provide objective analysis. Hear about many IPO's lately? Do the math...