Stock Data to Cost $9,000/month

Here is a comment from a NYSE employee that cuts through all the bureaucratic haze and explicitly states that retail types, like us, would be charged the ridiculous $9,000 a month:

Subject: [Release No. 34-80300; File No. SR-CTA/CQ-2017-02]
From: Anonymous

April 20, 2017

I apologize for missing the deadline for comments, this new proposal was just recently brought to my attention.

I am writing anonymously because I am afraid of retaliation from the employees and management of NYSE as will be outlined below. It is likely there are others withholding comment for this reason. These fees are large enough to destroy small firms and traders. And this latest proposal pretty much sweeps 99% of the user base into the non-display category.

It is time this entire CTA/CTB pricing model be acknowledged for what it is - a money grab by NYSE. The SIP is a public utility that is essential to the proper functioning of the market. Beyond that many market participants are legally required to subscribe for compliance and risk management purposes - purposes considered non-display by NYSE.

Furthermore, the whole justification for this pricing model is to align fees with useage. Going by this yardstick it is an abject failure. A small retail trader or boutique broker/dealer pays the same exact amount as the largest HFT or market maker. Also, access fees are charged whether using a 3rd party data vendor, a retail broker, or getting data direct from NYSE - this makes absolutely no sense.

Finally, the rules are applied and exempted arbitrarily by employees and management. In my experience, different account managers have different criteria. Some decisions I have been made aware of seem punitive. I have seen similar users get charged different rates. I have already seen these fees put smaller operators out of business.

CTA/CTB are essential public utilities administered by a monopoly. The SEC needs to exert much more control over the pricing process. My suggestions:

1) force NYSE to revert to the pre 2014 pricing model until they can come up with something better.

2) Force NYSE to be transparent about costs and revenue. NYSE needs to outline in detail their costs, their expected revenue per subscriber type along with the expected number of subscribers. They should detail what type of user is intended to be in included in which type of subscription. For example, market makers would be subscription type A, retail traders would be subscription type B, broker/dealers using data for compliance would be type C.

3) Access fees should only be charged to users getting data from NYSE directly.

4) Only NYSE requires users to pay NYXData directly. There's no reason fees can't be paid through resellers, as is done by every other market venue in the US. This is just a waste of everyone's money and time getting billed separately every month by NYSE.

5) Fees should be priced with the idea of ENCOURAGING more market participants - not driving them out of business.

Thank you for your time.

It cost's me a dollar/month to get NYSE data. That would be one dollar extra on top of the rest of the things I get from Quotemedia. Now, that 1 dollar/month becomes worth $9,000/month.

And Bernie and fauxahahntis and shrillary and the rest of the grandstanders decry the escalating costs of drugs? Well that was well covered and covered again and covered ad nauseum by the LameStream Media.

But not even Martin Shkreli had the stones to raise drug prices by 899,900%.

And not a peep from the Lamestream media. In fact, unless I was monitoring Eric Hunsader's tweets, none you you readers would have ever heard of it.

But what you probably can't accept is that, despite your "free" stock data you get from your broker, AMTD, ETRD, Schwab, whatever, YOU are (or were) going to start paying $9,000/month.

A simple price alert (when XYZ hits B price, alert me). That is a non-display item and it costs $9,000/month. And your mind goes "no, that can't be." And the fact is "yes, that is exactly what the NYSE is trying to do to you."

And the Lamestream media is mute. Where is the outrage? Where are the champions of the little guy?

I once had a friend who was an attorney, and we got into a discussion about conflicts of interest. And he said "an attorney never has a conflict. It is always a case of who can pay more."

The SEC is supposed to be our "attorney." Just go check their web site and read their mission statement. Better yet, go read the Acts of 1933 and 1934 where the SEC was formed and what their purpose was under law.

In case the dates don't ring a bell, this was after the REALLY BIG Market Crash. The SEC exists because Congress said "never again." And how did that work out?

Well, time and money. Things get perverted over time and due to money.

Subject: SR-CTA/CQ-2017-02
From: Edward Foda

April 19, 2017

Dear Mr. Fields,

I realize the comment period is past due, but I write this in the hope that you or someone at the commission may still read this. I appreciate the opportunity to comment, thank you.

I'm an independent investor/trader who in November had his data fees "theoretically" increase 2000%. I say theoretically because I have not received a formal bill for "non-display" CTA data yet, but am being told by a NYSE representative that I will be back-billed soon. It's my assumption that NYSE is likely waiting for approval of this action in order to commence billing. I assume they may have questioned the legality of their actions with respect to their handling of my broker who alerted me to the fee increases. I am not one to pass judgement on this though, I am far from a legal expert, but I feel compelled to give a short synopsis of what has been occurring at my retail broker in order to give an idea of the impact that is already occurring in the industry with respect to this proposal.

In October 2016 I was alerted that at the beginning of November all NYSE data (CTA in my case), would be turned off if non-display declarations were not made. I did not consider my data use-age "non-display", neither did my retail broker who was also my data provider. However, they had undergone an audit by NYSE that concluded that API users of their platform would be considered "non-display". In order to avoid being "back-billed" for all the months that they had been distributing data "in violation of the non-display policies", they required everyone at the broker to submit to NYSE non-display subscriber agreements and all retail clients would begin to report to them directly. It is still not clear to me whether NYSE is vendor, SRO, or licensee of the data, however it WAS clear that if you refused to sign, the data was turned off.

A little background on the platform. It is a typical UI based platform with an API for analytics and/or order placement. The majority of their customers are small retail individuals with API use-age over the internet with symbol data subscriptions in the dozens of symbols. In addition, they also provide higher speed trading facilities for more advanced traders. That "high speed" data, however, is still accessed indirectly via normalized feeds and via authenticated subscription per symbol. They are a small retail brokerage and did not have the money to contest the allegations.

In addition, it was made clear that the data received would be considered "Direct Access", which essentially doubles the fee of the already extremely high "non-display" fees. In the CTA market data policy, "Direct Access" is defined clearly as a firm having direct connection to SIAC. My broker does not have direct connections. Indirect Access fees are defined as everything else and they give the example of a vendor using normalized data. Our broker distributes normalized data. However, outside of the policy, and inside the private user agreement I compulsorily signed in order to continue to receive data, there is a clause under the Indirect Access definition that states that NYSE considers EVERY customer Direct Access by default and it is at their discretion to assign a Subscriber an Indirect Access designation, regardless of actual circumstances. I asked the NYSE official to in the very least have an Indirect designation, since it very closely matched the description, but was denied.

In my quest to find ways to reduce the burden of these fees, I found the policy language stating that the fees are charged at the "firm" level. What this means, is that if you are a trading firm, say Virtu, with 500 traders all using direct access connections with low latency raw data, NYSE would consider your firm a "Subscriber", and you would pay data at the "firm level", ie for CTA data approx $10,000 a month. None of the individuals in the firm would have to pay these fees. Just the firm, one time. If however you are a retail investor, subscribing to a high latency, normalized feed, over the internet, via an API, then you are ALSO considered a "Subscriber" and would individually have to also pay $10,000 a month. To me, this seems inherently unfair, that a retail investor with a sub-standard data feed would have to pay the same as an entire trading firm receiving much higher quality data.

In my brokers case, there are many clients who stopped using their API services, and in my case will ultimately have to as well. It's a 6 figure a year data burden. For someone who does not make much more than that a year, I cannot afford to stay in business. It would be great if the SEC could take a close look at this proposal and what NYSE is currently, and has already doing in its name. I should say, the CTA, but it's clear from my experience that the CTA is just another arm of the NYSE market data department. It's my hope here, that in their targeting of retail investors with institutional fees, they may have finally crossed the line.

Sincerely,
Edward Foda

p.s.
I did not include the name of the broker in the letter above, but if the commission would like to contact me privately I could go into greater detail.