ARTHUR LEVITT

Our purpose, as we face these challenges, remains clear - fair and orderly markets that allow for efficient capital formation, while protecting the interests of investors.

Investors should start with a view of skepticism. They should become intellectual investors rather than emotional investors. They should be careful, and they should be skeptical.

Promoting the interaction of orders remains one of the most difficult, but crucially important, challenges we face concerning our national market system.

Another misconception is that an order is canceled when you hit 'cancel' on your computer. But, the fact is it's canceled only when the market gets the cancellation.

Over the past two decades, we have clearly seen an erosion of ethical values.

Our role is to maintain and monitor a framework in which fair competition can flourish.

The tension between centrality, on the one hand, and competition, on the other, is probably the oldest of all market structure issues.

Today, the forces of competition, technology, and globalization have converged to spur innovation and to transform the way business is done in the securities industry.

I think we have got to start thinking about banding together in terms of interested groups.

It is incumbent on us to facilitate the development of a market structure that best assures that these changes benefit the U.S. securities markets as a whole.

Our markets have not achieved their great successes as a result of government fiat, but rather through efforts of competing interests working to meet the demands of investors and to fulfill the promises posed by advancing technology.

Although the Internet makes it seem as if you have a direct connection to the securities market, you don't. Lines may clog; systems may break; orders may back-up.

Firms need to ensure that their ability to provide effective customer service keeps pace with their growth. If you're marketing your firm to new customers, you better be able to provide them service when they do business with you.

What must occur is a greater recognition by investors of their individual responsibility.

One way for investors to protect themselves from a rapid change in the price of a stock is to use a limit order rather than a market order.

Once again, stock markets have been threatened with extinction for almost 75 years, and I have found that stock markets are harder to kill than roaches.

I think that the failures of Enron and WorldCom and other companies are partially failures of investors to recognize companies that are selling for a thousand times nothing, but chances are they may be worth only that.

No longer will you [individuals] be second class citizens to institutional interests.

Say no to politicians who sacrifice the interests of individual investors to corporate interests.

Some American companies operate in the gray area between legitimacy and outright fraud … where the accounting is being perverted.

George Orwell once blamed the demise of the English language on politics. It's quite possible he never read a prospectus.

Today it's fashionable to talk about the New Economy, or the Information Economy, or the Knowledge Economy. But when I think about the imperatives of this market, I view today's economy as the Value Economy. Adding value has become more than just a sound business principle; it is both the common denominator and the competitive edge.

But when that information travels only to a privileged few, when it is used to profit at the expense of the investing public, when that information comes by way of favored access rather than by acumen, insight or diligence, we must ask, 'Whose interest is really being served?'.

We should never lose sight of the underlying essence of a market-a place where buyers and sellers come together. Every other feature-whether crafted by tradition or technology-exists only to serve that primary purpose.

Personally I don't think day traders are speculating, because traditional speculation requires some market knowledge. They are, instead, gambling, which doesn't.