Today, Shann Turnbull writes about the unsatisfactory nature of current share trading rules. In particular he rails against the fact that the government, the regulators and the ASX allows “covert share trading” as opposed to “sunlight trading” which was the case in Henry’s day when shares were brought and sold in the coffee houses in trading with people all of whom knew each other.

“A simple solution would be for the government to cancel the ASX operating license and require all Australian shares to be traded on E-Bay! E-Bay not only requires disclosure by participants of themselves and what they know about the goods being offered but it also outlines their trading history. In addition E-Bay allows counter parties to rate their satisfaction in how the quality of the goods traded matched the description of the seller.

“Sunlight trading not only provides far greater protection for investors and traders but creates a much fairer and efficient market. It avoids the cost of ineffectual monitoring of market activities. Its time that market ideologues walked the talk to privatize both monitoring and corrective action of insider trading.”

Read the full article here.