Shouldn’t public markets have public data?

The NYSE is a privately held company that markets itself as the world’s largest public market. Yet it charges $8.4k per month for real-time data access, plus $78 per professional user monthly. You can build algorithmic trading systems through Robinhood or Schwab APIs, but you can’t feed them real-time NYSE order flow because the NYSE owns that data and charges massive fees to access it. A developer trading their own money on their own brokerage still can’t programmatically access the market data they need to compete. When analysis was the bottleneck, data gatekeeping didn’t matter. Now that frontier AI commoditized analytical tools, controlling data access is the only competitive advantage left. But here’s what really matters: information asymmetry breaks market efficiency. When retail traders and developers can’t access real-time order flow, prices don’t reflect true value and volatility increases. The regulatory battleground isn’t AI tools anymore. It’s data access. Public markets need public, affordable, real-time data endpoints. Otherwise you’re not running price discovery, you’re running a lottery where entry fee determines odds. If access to this data doesn’t provide an advantage, then why do people and institutions pay for it?