SEC Head Would Give Small Investors a Break
NEW YORK, March 18ÛÓIf G. Bradford Cook can make it stickÛÓand thatÛªs a big ifÛÓ there may be a new day ahead for stock market investors. In fact, the plans and ideas he laid out in a speech here last week could mean that, finally, people who can only buy stock 100 shares at a time will get the same kind of treatment that, in the past, has been reserved for those who buy in the thousands.</br></br>said that he hopes to have the new system im operation in two years, there is a very large question of whether he actually can do it. Not thatÛªs impossible in the technical, operational sense. But his plan calls for a lot of adjustment by some very powerful elements in Wall Street, people who are not accustomed to too much adjustjng.</br></br>Essentially, Cook said that his idea of the stock market of the future is to tie together all the market-making capacity in the country, to let anybody who is qualified get Into the operation and have all these people complete with each other.</br></br>To add economic teeth to the idea, Cook said that brokers would be required to take customers ordersÛÓ that's all customers ÛÓto the market, on or off an exchange, where the customer gets the best deal.</br></br>THAT WOULD pretty much erase the difference between the markets on the exchange and those in the over-the-counter market. It would put Big Board specialists into direct compe-tion with all the other market-makers, a position they have never especially relished. And when you consider that the NYSE specialist corps includes such as Bernard J. Lasker, one of President NixonÛªs most productive money-raisers, that translates into some rather formidable opposition for CookÛªs plans.