<i>I think a better way to change exchanges is to dramatically decimalize the price levels.</i><p>The idea that reduced tick sizes would force traders to compete on price rather than time is a popular HN market microstructure solution, but it&#x27;s wrong or at least partly wrong.<p>1) Liquidity taking strategies will still &quot;compete on time&quot; in order to trade at the most favorable prices. Market making strategies will still &quot;compete on time&quot; in order to avoid getting picked off.<p>2) Inverted fee venues and midpoint order types offer sophisticated traders the opportunity to trade at prices within a 1 penny spread. If you watch the tape for a stock like ZNGA you will see this type of trading.<p>3) There are a number of high priced &#x2F; high volume stocks that don&#x27;t trade at a penny spread. GOOG is a good example. Do you find GOOG trading to be somehow cheaper, more orderly or efficient than e.g. MSFT? The GOOG spread is almost never a penny and is regularly over 20 cents. If the benefits are there, they ought to be obvious.