This will push small retail traders to competing products. –Kurt Johnson, ADMIS
It will cost me business because I now pay for some customers quote platforms. I simply cannot afford to do this with the new proposal. –Steve McWhorter President, McWhorter & Mathers Financial Services
Please don’t raise the fees. We are a small IB that is barely hanging on as it is with all the new regulations. Pretty soon IB’s will be a thing of the past. –Dave Janson, President, Strategic Farm Marketing
Ag customers will rely more on alternate products to manage risk such as government insurance programs, forward contracts, etc. CME should spend more time restoring customer confidence. –Troy Vetterkind Owner, Vetterkind Cattle Brokerage, LLC
I am adamantly opposed to CME’s proposed transaction fee and quote fee increases. These fees will have a very detrimental effect on retail IB’s, as well as customers who utilize quote feeds. –Pete Loewen, Loewen and Associates, Inc.
There will be less regulatory control because non-pros will front for pros—this will increase risk. There will be less logins because everyone will try to save money, so there will be poorer customer service and risk management. –Anonymous
I cannot think of a more absurd business killer than raising fees by the exchanges. This will kill the last bastion of capitalism. This is the way to destroy a system that works. The best way to raise income is to increase business not in essence tax it to death. –Joe Teale, Great Plains Commodities
I question the wisdom of increasing data fees given that every broker by definition has to have a disaster recovery plan which includes multiple platforms. –John Turner
The IB's have already been hit by lower trading volume and misconduct by FCM's, of which the CME was the DSRO, and our cost of doing business has been going up and our income going down. MF Global has never paid the commissions due the IB's and these rate increases are going to be very hard to live with. We would request that the CME rethink these fees. –Robert F. Boe, President, Southwest Futures Inc.
The proposed increases will have a significant effect on our company. We completely understand our responsibility to pay data fees for our quote and charting services. We do not understand our responsibility to pay for data fees to operate our order entry platforms. Why should we be taxed to operate our electronic order platforms that the CME has forced us to transition to? Secondly, we are expected to maintain back-up systems and pay for them also? We have a total of eight employees: five brokers, two trade assistants, and one comptroller. Under the proposed changes our data charges will increase over $50,000 per year. This is a pure tax; it does nothing to promote business. In fact, it encourages us to be less efficient. We can’t understand why the CME would want to penalize the very group that promotes their products! –David Hutchins President Amarillo Brokerage Company