The U.S. equity markets are the most robust in the world and continue to be among the deepest, most competitive, most liquid and most efficient. They are also among the most regulated.

Efficient and resilient market structure is key to sustaining investor confidence and participation in the equity markets. Market structure can drive liquidity and trade costs for businesses and investors alike. Therefore, market participants continually strive to create the most efficient markets. This includes adapting new technologies to achieve operational efficiencies, searching for new ways to transact and, generally, optimizing market structure to maximize efficiencies. Market makers exist to provide liquidity in securities and execute customer trades, playing an important role in equity market structure by enabling liquidity and balancing buy and sell demand. Importantly, investors, particularly retail investors, benefit from this efficiency and resiliency through reduced costs including no or low commissions, best execution and competition. All market participants seek to drive innovation to further improve equity market efficiency, resiliency and most importantly the benefit to investors. However, regulators must carefully weigh the impact of any changes on investors. Specifically, as the SEC considers proposing major changes to our current equity market structure system, it is critical that any changes be data-driven with robust cost-benefit analysis.

In the end, regulators and market participants should work towards the same goal: to promote market resiliency and efficiency and ensure the U.S. equity markets continue to benefit investors and play an essential role in capital formation.