Follow this link to the article about the idea of taxing financial speculation.

I have not thought through the ramifications of such a tax, but the above article points to a study of such ramifications.  I’ll read the study to see if I still like this idea.

On first blush, it sounds like an excellent idea.  Rather than add more complex laws that only lawyers could love, why not just tax behavior that you want to cut down on?

Now that Fidelity has cut my transaction cost to $7.95 per trade, I could afford to pay the tax.  Actually, as the article points out, for the number of trades that I do per year, the tax wouldn’t even be noticed by me.  The kind of trading I do is not the kind that needs to be discouraged.