First, let me make it clear, I don&#x27;t view market participants competing on time as a problem and physics means it will always be a component of the price of the risk associated with trading.  But if we are going to be making changes to markets, I&#x27;d much rather change the pricing requirements than adding esoteric random time differences, or assuming batch auctions will make things better.<p>The reason I like reducing tick sizes (and I mean dramatically like 1&#x2F;1000th or more) is less about the bid ask spread at the middle, but rather the competition at the +1 levels.  A lot of the latency advantage right now is in being able to cancel a few levels near the midpoint while leaving tons of other orders stacked.<p>Reducing tick sizes would make these deep stacking strategies less viable, which seems (though I have no proof) like it would make the positions of the market makers less risky in a systematic way.<p>As for GOOG vs MSFT, I think that is obviously explained by the much higher price of GOOG right?  Nothing is going to make holding a stock that costs more less risky, even speed.