Your stats are old (2016). The 2024 median household net worth in the US is almost $200k. That may be equity in a house with a mortgage and not cash in a bank account, but it's an asset. Should be higher, but if I had $200k in the bank and rented, nobody would say I live "paycheck to paycheck".

Biden got very little credit for reversing trends that had a lot of inertia; left of center people posting things that ignore the actual good things that occurred to argue that the system is rigged and Democrats have sold you out too is part of how we got to where we are.

One issue is that the chart ends 9 years ago and the last 6 of those were pretty different from the trend.
www.epi.org/publication/...

How come you're not tagging Doge here? It seemed like maybe you were flagging the SEC for cuts over at the other place. It seemed kinda gross.

This is because of increasing sentiment that Trump would win the election, then him winning the election, leading to increased retail trading relative to market volumes ("the Trump Trade"). Crypto trading is up too. Does not mean price discovery or other market dynamics are broken.

Retail volume increases with fear/greed, and the election caused some of the first and a lot of speculation because of the latter. Institutional trading happens more off exchange when volatility goes up. When it is low, institutions try to capture the spread and can collect rebates.

Retail trading volumes relative to the market generally is the key factor. Retail orders are mostly executed off exchange, because of price improvement and best execution (retail firms that route to exchanges get worse overall execution quality for their customers).

Screenshot from the MFA letter requesting Acting Chair Uyeda take certain actions, including with respect to Rule 13f-2 and Form SHO.

This is just factually inarguable. Creating the spec 2 weeks before the effective date of the rule (when most firms have code freezes) for a major new rule is unbelievably reckless. Uyeda and Pierce will hopefully see that (I would hope Crenshaw will too, but have less confidence there).

The SEC provided nonsensical guidance then no guidance regarding short position reporting. Does it make sense to report positions that do not constitute a net short position within an aggregation unit? Requires no locate, no borrow to make delivery, and could actually be long. SEC disagrees. Silly.

Yes. They likely naked shorted TENS of shares while facilitating fractional share BUYERS. The horror, the horror! Maybe the SEC should have focused on updating DTCC for fractions to improve market operations. But no, instead he wanted headlines of RH Reg SHO fines for naked shorting fractions.