ETFs are marketed as convenient ways to gain access to commodities, rates, crypto, and volatility-but in many cases, they're inefficient, expensive, and poorly designed.
Here's why serious traders and investors should avoid using ETFs as a proxy for real futures exposure:
Equities may be marketed as the path for the everyday investor-but under the surface, they've become a maze of fragmented exchanges, slow public data feeds (SIP), and opaque order routing games stacked against retail.
Futures, on the other hand, are often misunderstood as "too complex" or "just for institutions." In reality, they've evolved into one of the fairest, most efficient ways for anyone - retail, HFT, or institutional-to trade.
The SIP (Securities Information Processor) was created to ensure transparency and protect investors by consolidating quotes and trades from all U.S. equity exchanges into a single public feed. But in practice, it's now one of the biggest obstacles to fair and sustainable market structure.
Here's why SIP makes markets unfair for the little guy: