Nah. Not going to happen. They introduced a bunch of legislation already in congress trying to tax per per share per transaction, all got killed very quickly; offends the All-American capitalism sensibilities too much.
While I agree with you that HFT is a scam, I disagree with you that it's a ponzi scheme. It's more like ticket-scalping, so the scheme is going to go on forever, as long as SEC allows it (which they will because the sell-side lobby groups will label themselves as liquidity providers that tighten the spread) and normal people are trading.
What amuses me about Main Street's outrage on HFT is that they suddenly take this expose as a new revelation that Wall Street is screwing with retail investors when the big prop shops/broker-dealers have been raping retail investors and pension plans/retirement mutual funds for decades. HFT is just the latest instrument of exploitations.
Anti-scalping laws are a good example of the government intervening in a market to prevent natural price discovery, and to hand advantage to the sell-side.
It reduces the size of the market for related goods, such as record sales, clothing, TV subscriptions, etc. by alienating poorer consumers. It hurts the brand, basically.
As I see it, I disagree that it alienates poorer consumers.
Perhaps you were thinking along this line: that it discourages venues from offering coupon clipping discounts. It won't though: a venue has a fixed number of seats available, and will attempt to maximise its profit for this available volume of seats. If they're going to have leftovers, they'll find ways to discount out what's left.
Scalping works against a venue practice where they charge higher prices for last-minute tickets with an intent of selling less-than-all the available tickets but netting more profit due to the high charges. With scalping, they compete with the guys out the front gates and last-minute sites on the internet. It now becomes more attractive for them to try and sell all the seats, rather than charging a lot for just a few. Hence, scalping is helping reduce prices, and creates more places at the venue.
Separately, if you got into a situation where you had to choose between seeing Madonna on stage and eating you can sell your ticket and buy food with what you get.
Interesting: scalping becomes less lucrative when it's legal because venues know they are unlike to get away with things that they will do well on when it's banned. As a result, the market won't exist.
Perhaps you have other scenarios I haven't thought of though, if so I'm interested to hear.
You're just focused on ticketing for a single event. What I'm saying is that it's about more than just tickets, and for more than just a single event.
I'm suggesting fans will be turned off of performers / entertainers / sports teams / etc. by the perception that they (the performers) are overcharging for their performance, and that will hurt the longevity of the brand, and the sales performance of related products.
Similarly, if you drive out youth and cater for wealthier older people in the interests of maximizing short-term revenue, you endanger brand engagement 10 or 20 years down the line - this is particularly important for sports clubs.
While I agree with you that HFT is a scam, I disagree with you that it's a ponzi scheme. It's more like ticket-scalping, so the scheme is going to go on forever, as long as SEC allows it (which they will because the sell-side lobby groups will label themselves as liquidity providers that tighten the spread) and normal people are trading.
What amuses me about Main Street's outrage on HFT is that they suddenly take this expose as a new revelation that Wall Street is screwing with retail investors when the big prop shops/broker-dealers have been raping retail investors and pension plans/retirement mutual funds for decades. HFT is just the latest instrument of exploitations.