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Comment by eries | Hacker News Reader

The requirements are embodied in the listing standards of the exchange, and have enforcement mechanisms equivalent to other listing standards. The SEC takes this stuff quite seriously - as they should - so instances of companies violating listing standards are thankfully pretty rare. I expect the same thing here.

In terms of the requirements on trading that you mention, a requirement like that would violate current SEC rules about trading. But remember that companies are the metaphorical "central bank" of their own currency and can do all kinds of things that would reward those investors who truly are committed for the long-term. We don't have anything to announce in this area at this time, but I hope to be able to say more some day.

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I do like that you explained why this is the case and didn't just provide a non-answer to it. Are you lobbying to get these sorts of rules changed?

(last time the question came up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19886420 )

It's not quite a simple as the word "lobbying" implies. But we are in active conversations with a lot of the other stakeholders on both the buy side and sell side to see if we can find ways to bring some flavor of this to the markets. But I really can't be more specific because we don't have anything concrete to report - yet.

I will say that I expect companies will also have opportunities to innovate in this area when it comes to their own stock, though I do think it will take a while as the industry is relatively conservative about things like this.

Thank you for the very useful information! Is there a place to track innovations here?

not that I'm aware of, unfortunately

Something like improved dividends after some holding period?

I happen to like that idea but as far as I know no company has tried it (yet)

Still not clear though, why they need to dual list for this purpose. They can commit to the same actions without listing on exchange. I mean, you could have a service that monitors these commitments, but I am not clear as to why this service needs to be an exchange. It could be a product NYSE, NASDAQ just offer if there is demand. The fundamental purpose of an exchange is to facilitate trading.

That is only one of two fundamental purposes of exchanges, historically speaking. Listing standards are at least equally as important

agreed, but nothing stops any of the existing exchanges to have special listing classes, if there really is demand for that type of thing. Nothing stops any of the companies currently listed on any of the exchanges from committing to those same principles, etc. It just seems like a solution in search of a problem. Not that it can't make money for the investors, I am sure it can. But I don't see the point of this in terms of value proposition.

Do you have a simple guide for retail investers? For example will I be able to buy stocks via apps like Robinhood or Revolut?

I am intrigued by your offering, and for a retail trader holding LTSE stocks could be a better investment than aggressively day traded markets (especially if day trading were to be banned etc.), and might offer a strong alternative to regular retail stocks which are a bit too much of a rollercoaster ride, so I don't think I want to play that game much, but I also don't have a trading account at some huge institution.

Will you push to ensure retail investers are able casually join in?

We don't have such a guide yet, but it's a good idea. At the moment, all of our stocks are available through every legacy brokerage. Some brokers allow you to specify when you do a trade which venue the trade gets routed to, and you can specify LTSE today for that purpose.

I do expect over time listed companies will develop special rewards and benefits for long-term investors. Our rules are designed to make sure that any such programs are equally available to retail investors to casually join in, as you say

What rule would such a requirement violate? Does the SEC have rules saying high-frequency/day trading must be allowed?

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