Remove Exchange Fees for Stock Market Data

Stock market data is essential public infrastructure. It determines how Americans value their retirement accounts, invest their savings, understand the economy, and participate in the financial markets. Yet access to high-quality, timely market data is increasingly controlled by a pay-to-play system in which stock exchanges charge substantial fees for information generated through public market activity.

We call on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Congress, and all U.S. national securities exchanges to ensure that every member of the American public has free access to high-quality stock market data.

Stock exchanges occupy a privileged position at the center of America’s financial system. They should serve the investing public—not use their control over essential market information to create artificial barriers between those who can afford premium data and those who cannot.

Today, individual investors, students, researchers, financial educators, journalists, startups, and independent developers can face costly licensing requirements simply to access or redistribute accurate market data. Meanwhile, the largest financial institutions can afford extensive data feeds, specialized infrastructure, and direct exchange connections.

This creates an uneven playing field. The quality of the information available to an investor should not depend on the size of that investor’s bank account.

Market data is produced through the collective activity of public companies and market participants. Investors submit the orders. Companies create the securities. The public supplies the capital. Exchanges should not be permitted to place the resulting information behind prohibitively expensive toll gates.

Free, high-quality market data would:

• Give ordinary Americans better tools to manage their savings and retirement accounts.
• Reduce the information gap between individual investors and large financial institutions.
• Support financial education, academic research, journalism, and market transparency.
• Encourage competition and innovation among financial technology companies.
• Make it easier to identify errors, manipulation, and unusual market activity.
• Strengthen public confidence in the fairness of U.S. capital markets.

At a minimum, the public should receive free access to timely and reliable U.S. market information, including:

• Real-time or near-real-time prices.
• Best bids and offers.
• Trading volume.
• Historical price and volume data.
• Corporate actions such as dividends and stock splits.
• Clear, standardized, machine-readable data suitable for research and public-interest applications.

Exchanges may reasonably charge for specialized infrastructure, enhanced analytics, ultra-low-latency connectivity, and customized institutional services. However, basic access to accurate market information should not be treated as a luxury product.

We therefore call for the following reforms:

• Require U.S. national securities exchanges to provide a comprehensive baseline of high-quality market data to the public free of charge.
• Prohibit excessive licensing and redistribution fees that prevent public-interest organizations, educators, researchers, journalists, and small technology companies from making market data broadly accessible.
• Establish transparent standards governing what exchanges may charge for premium data products and technical services.
• Require market-data fees to be reasonably related to the actual cost of collecting, processing, and distributing the data.
• Create a simple public licensing framework that permits non-exclusive access, analysis, display, and responsible redistribution of baseline market data.

America’s capital markets are among the most important public institutions in the world. Their strength depends not only on speed and liquidity, but also on transparency, fairness, and public trust.

The stock market should not be a private information club reserved for institutions with the largest data budgets. It should be a fair and accessible marketplace in which every American can see the same essential facts.

End excessive exchange fees for essential stock market data. Reject the pay-to-play model. Give the American public free access to the information generated by its own financial markets.

Sign this petition to support fair, transparent, and accessible markets for everyone.