Yeah, it makes sense to advocate for that if you are a sophisticated trader who hope to fleece the naive retail. For 99%+ of people though near instant price discovery and efficient price is a big net benefit.

Imagine news broke that makes a company worth 15% less. Naive investors isn't aware of it and makes their bid on the market. They look at a recent price, make some offer and buys the shares now worth 15% less while bankers who were able to process the information just made a killing. This is even worse in "slow exchanges" where participants need to come-up with bid price themselves because recent transaction price is not a relevant indicator of fair value.

If this whole efficiency argument means I'm going to make $1 more per month while some lousy traders make $100k more per month, then I'd say: to hell with "efficiency". Fairness and wealth equality are more important to me than $1.

Also considering that these traders will use their $100k in ways that my $1 will become worth even less. For example by buying all the housing in my neighborhood and thereby increasing my rent.

Without that efficiency it'd be like the old days before electronic trading where you're paying 100x larger fees to a crusty old brokerage any time you want to trade.

Why would the fees be bigger? The old brokerages had to do manual work to put the bid on the trading floor.

Electronic trading doesn't need to go away. The trade itself might take some time instead of being functionally instant, but that's fine.

Doesn't matter. Banning short term trading will also reduce # trade events, so the fees don't matter.

It’s amazing how successful populism is, even HN is now full of populistic comments.

What makes your comment better or less "populist" than mine? What does populism even have to do with it?

Evil bankers/finance people vs ordinary workers performing jobs everyone can understand, that’s classic populist tactic.

Perhaps, but how is it helping the discussion by framing it like that?