Hi Bo. Good posts. I have one thing to add which jumped out at me when I read the post:
He states:
"The joke in our office is that, if another market maker calls you and begins the conversation with, "Hey, buddy", what follows will not be a legal suggestion. I have yet to see an exception to this rule."
As investors acting in good faith, there is nothing funny or no joke to the form of manipulation that we have seen at the hand of MM's. Thanks to the information age, the light of truth will bring these practices to an end.
At my job, we have someone who's notorious for spending large amounts of our department's money. He's made many purchases for things we don't really need which have cost us a lot of cash. We call him the "Big Spender". It's his nickname around here. We have an in-joke about him because he's done the same thing so many times. Can you see where I'm going here?
In order for the MMs to have an in-joke like this, it must've come up more than once or twice.
-TC