Some Thoughts:

But first, the important stuff. Detroit’s Galaragga had his perfect game blown by a ninth inning call by Umpire Joyce. It was terrible call, but perhaps the best part of this story is not even being focused on yet. Joyce apologized publically. He also did it profusely, privately. Galaragga hugged him and accepted it. Like men they both showed that we are all human, and they were an example for our kids to behold. Galaragga did not charge the mound. He didn’t hurl expletives or spit. And Joyce did something umps never do. He sought Galaragga out in the locker room and apologized with tears in person. A+ guys.  A+.

Ok. So there was a Philly dude at the Roundtable (Gus Sauter of Vanguard) and there was a Chicago dude (Stephen Schuler of GETCO). And they were on the same side during much of the debate/discussion. What’s up with that??? And no, there were no blows. Phew. I’ll say this. I was humbled to be invited to partake in a discussion about the future of our nation’s equity markets.

Commissioner Mary Schapiro is an impressive person, and I was honored to meet her. She stepped into her position as the 29^th commissioner of the SEC in the midst of the mother of all financial crises, and is undertaking the largest scale reform and examination of our markets, that any past commissioner has ever had to undertake. She is a War-time Consigliere, and that role requires a certain kind of person.

I thought I’d give you a rundown of Panel II, which I was on, and I’ll try to do it objectively as well. The panel included myself, Kevin Cronin of Invesco, Dave Cushing of Wellington, Michael Goldstein of Babson College, Richard Gorelick of RGM, Mark Grier of Prudential, Terrency Henderschott of UC of Berkeley, Stephen Schuler of Getco, and Jeff Wecker of Lime.

I know 14 investors watched on live web TV instead of Buffet on CNBC, so this is for all the other 94 million who didn’t. Here goes:

Sal: It’s like with ticket brokers; high frequency related firms and brokers, and they seem to get all the best seats to the Springsteen concerts. The overwhelming majority of us have to put in that code thingy on the website, complete a form in 2 minutes, and get seats in Section 3,467, Row YYZ, Seats 86, 87, 88, 89, and inexplicably 7. PS The world is ending.

Kevin: We are real investors, examining companies, etc. We don’t own stocks for 6 seconds, and we don’t have funds named Enhanced Institutional Elephant Order Neutralizer, like Rich does.

David: HFT has lowered my costs a lot. The market order is evil.

Michael: Chicago is not near New York. It takes an order 4 milliseconds to travel to Plymouth. The markets may be too fast. There should be one auction a day where Big Papi decides the prices.

Richard: We have this trading algo that picks off Kevin’s orders. What’s the problem? Anyone can get the public tools to do this; just call the exchanges with your credit card in hand.

Mark: These kids are all playing video games and need to go study history and cut this crap out (Mark was a big picture voice of calm and reason on our panel; sorry for poking fun at him, but what the hey anyway).

Terrence: Nasdaq gave me some data to study. I studied it. The markets are fine.

Stephen: If Sal shows his face in Chi-town, Me and Coach Ditka are gonna take him for a ride.

Jeff: Lime has no conflicts of interest, unlike G and G, and we give small guys the speed they need to play along side the G and G big boys. Bwaaaaahaaaaahaaaaaaaa. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Did I just say that? I just listened to myself. Scratch that.