August 15, 2008
To those within the decision making process,
Today is August 15, 2008. We are officially two days past the closing of yet another comment period regarding the Options Market Making exemption. By my account, the responses presented in this most recent comment session are in no way dissimilar to those previously submitted under prior rule making proposals.
Also to be noted, Mr. Higgins of the American Bar Association is once again missing in action regarding public comment on a proposal delayed specifically to satisfy his demand for more empirical data. Higgins never responded to the re-submission of the grandfather elimination proposal after that proposal was delayed to provide Higgins with more empirical data and Higgins failed to respond to this proposal after it was delayed to again provide him with more empirical data. I can only wonder how many times will the SEC fall for this trick by Higgins who clearly was representing his clients at Ropes Gray when he drafted his earlier memo and was not representing the opinions of the ABA or any sub-committee within the ABA.
So where are the member firms that were to respond to this latest tactic of delay? Do they not have an opinion after all this time or will their prior opinions stand as is? If their prior opinions are left standing, I would challenge that not one submitted have provided any sufficient data to justify their claims of a market disruption should the OMM exemption be completely eliminated.
Each member who commented previously had claimed that such a move would reduce liquidity in the options market and yet none provided any empirical data to substantiate such claims. These same members used similar threat when Reg SHO was drafted and we all know their claims did not stand the test of time.
So without any new insight being provided that had not already been presented, how much longer will the SEC take on making this move to firm up the safety of our capital markets? How much more abuse will the SEC witness before they provide the safety net to investors?