Last month the SEC proposed a change in the manner in which your retail stock broker places a trade order for you, the first such amendment in two decades.  The changes are technical in nature, are subject to revision after a comment period running at least to next March 31, and half of them were not agreeable to the two-member Republican minority of SEC Commissioners, even though they have been posited as lowing execution costs for the retail investor.

To simplify a bit, today your order to your broker is typically sent to a small number of wholesalers; many wholesalers pay a fee to your broker in exchange for getting assigned the task of executing the order (think Robinhood, paid last year $235M in consideration of receiving the broker’s order flow).

The Democratic members saw ultimate savings for retail investors; Republican members thought this was too much tinkering with how stocks are sold, noting that the system is not fully tested n high-volume situations and imposes a new requirement on brokers to explain all this to their customers.

(I avoid here describing the benefit of having the order flow to the wholesalers, or why Democratic SEC  Chairman Gensler stated that “Zero commission doesn’t mean zero cost,” describing the payments to the brokers in exchange for order  flow as “economic rent” which brokers pass on to their retail accounts.)

All Commissioners did vote in favor of proposals to make execution disclosure more complete about how orders are executed, and by lowering the increments allowed for stock trading.