Comment by resters

4 hours ago

It's a bit ironic that in a country with free markets, so much of the data that is relevant to modern finance is proprietary and quite expensive.

The exchange/marketplace is the oldest business in the world. How absurd that in 2026 seats on exchanges cost millions and the entities that control exchanges are mechanisms of gatekeeping rather than quality control -- the cronyism shown to SpaceX reveals just how corrupt it's become.

A stock exchange is nothing more than a marketplace. Anyone can start their own (the challenge being, getting a bunch of companies to want to list their stock with you).

That freedom is actually why it's hard to create a Bloomberg competitor - in order to provide their data stream, Bloomberg has to have partnerships with hundreds of companies worldwide who run exchanges for stocks, bonds and other instruments. If exchanges were government-controlled rather than free-market, there would be more centralization and getting the data together would be easier.