Cramer: Little Guy Gets Routed on High-Speed Exchanges

NEW YORK (Real Money -- Was I rude today when I asked a question about how BATS, the exchange company that canceled its IPO last Friday because of a glitch in its own software, helps the little guy?

I grilled Joe Ratterman, the CEO, on "Squawk on the Street," about how BATS benefits mom-and-pop investors, because I believe that high-frequency trading -- the genesis of the business of BATS -- is profoundly antithetical to the individual investor's confidence in the system.

The fact that BATS, which controls more than 11% of American trading, had to cancel its own IPO because it couldn't get its own system to work, is a blow against confidence. Any system that allows its first trade to be at $16 and the next one to trade at pennies, is not one I want to put my life savings into.

Nor do I trust a system that causes Apple(AAPL) to drop 9% on a 100-share trade that BATS executed, something that also happened on Friday. Apple's a half-a-trillion-dollar company, for heaven's sake.

I think that one of the reasons this occurred is that electronic trading is flawed. A big institution might understand these flaws and excuse them. But an individual investor just says, "Who the heck needs this nonsense?" It just reminds them of the horrendous "flash crash" day where stocks went down huge in minutes because of another software glitch.

What bothers me is that everyone claims to be helping the little guy. The BATS CEO came with the usual "liquidity" blather about how his company helps the little guy. He mentioned the time-honored narrowing of spreads between prices as something that his company helps bring about.

First, I think the spreads between prices were going to go down anyway because of the decision by exchanges to switch to decimal trading. Second, by bidding and then pulling bids in a lightning-fast fashion, I think BATS and similar outfits like them actually suck out the liquidity.

Third, I wouldn't be so angry if the CEO simply said, "Look, we have nothing to do with helping the little guy. We are about high-frequency institutional trading, we help those traders -- not small investors. We aren't about helping the mom-and-pop investors. Not at all. We are about doing what's right for a different set of clients irrespective of the little guy."

That's fine. I get that.