Over the past decade, the widespread availability of information and new technologies has helped establish the most level playing field in financial markets we’ve ever seen.
But there’s an exception to this positive trend: Exchanges are quietly, yet dramatically, increasing the fees they charge for market data and access to compensate for their own dramatic declines in market share as the revenues of brokers, specialists, market makers and other users of stock-exchange services have toppled. The result is that the exchanges are making it more expensive to trade, and that’s harming investors.
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