Don't Blame the Shorts! SEC 'Witch Hunt' Misses Real Cause of Market Ills

The SEC should outlaw naked short selling. We can't do naked buying. Shorts need to put their money up and keep their mouths shut with the false rumors and outright lies. The up-tick rule needs to be restated and inforced immediaely.

A sudden outbreak of common sense! Too bad it will die here.

It's NOT about shorting stock. It is about ILLEGALLY SHORTING COMPANIES INTO BANKRUPTCY. Naked shorts borrorwing against borrowed shares. What is THAT all about? WHo is this knuckledhead on the video?? If you can go LONG you should be able to SHORT. The problem is with the manipulators who are illegally shorting stocks.

It's NOT about shorting stock. It is about ILLEGALLY SHORTING COMPANIES INTO BANKRUPTCY. Naked shorts borrorwing against borrowed shares. What is THAT all about? WHo is this knuckledhead on the video?? If you can go LONG you should be able to SHORT. The problem is with the manipulators who are illegally shorting stocks.

Short-selling has been normal for a long time. Naked short-selling is tantatmount to fraud and should be a felony criminal offense. Naked short-selling is not a rare occurence either. If you check the daily SHO list, it is often the case that you will find a company failure to deliver constitutes in excess of 1/3 of all transactions for a particular day. These generally represent naked short-selling which drive down the price of the stock. Naked short-selling destroys equity in a fraudulent manner. For example, say a person sold you a house that they did not own, but promised to deliver that house to you at the end of 72 hours. Would you take that deal? How would you feel if at the end of the 72 hours the seller said they could not deliver the house as promised? Wouldn't you want your money back? In the stock market you don't get your money (equity) back on a failure to deliver. That is fraud and the naked short-seller deserves to be sent to prison. The broker who inititated the naked short-sale should lose their SEC license, and the company they work for should have to pay a hefty fine that would increase exponentially for each violation.

Souunds like all SEC is doing is enforcing a law that was already in place. I never read into it that the SEC is somehow trying to lay all the blame of the current financial crisis on short sellers. It comes down to every little bit helps. If you agree that if a company has 100 million shares outstanding, there should not be 150 million shares being traded at any one time, than you wouldn't mind the SEC enforcing the law. The article is saying that short sellers are not the problem. They're right. They're not. Illegal short selling is the problem, or least a major contribution to the problem. Some of the financial related stocks' debt is continually being downgraded by Moody's credit ratings, siting among the reasons the company's inability to raise affordable additonal capital. If part of the problem is that the stock has been so beaten down because naked short selling took place, than naked short selling is very significant to he problem.

Naked short-selling is fraud that damages the market place and steals equity from honest investors. Naked short-selling should be a felony with prison time for the naked short-seller, loss of the series-7 license for the broker, and hefty fines that increase with each violation for the brokerage firm.

The SEC is a joke. The fox guarding the hen house. HEY COX, get off your sorry arse and ban ALL NAKED SHORT SELLING! I know it will hurt some of your buddies, but they should be forced to play fair like the rest of us.

Just becouse a theater is poorly designed and is a fire trap doesn't give me the right to yell "fire" when it is crowded.

I am not a trader as such but even I can see how Naked short selling and the uptic rule change has caused problems and need to be changed. Many good companies have been forced out of business because of SEC rules.

Bull! Naked short selling is destructive. Period. It is not a matter of Good or Bad companies, it is a matter of what Co can be destroyed by naked shorts.

Souunds like all SEC is doing is enforcing a law that was already in place. I never read into it that the SEC is somehow trying to lay all the blame of the current financial crisis on short sellers. It comes down to every little bit helps. If you agree that if a company has 100 million shares outstanding, there should not be 150 million shares being traded at any one time, than you wouldn't mind the SEC enforcing the law. The article is saying that short sellers are not the problem. They're right. They're not. Illegal short selling is the problem, or least a major contribution to the problem. Some of the financial related stocks' debt is continually being downgraded by Moody's credit ratings, siting among the reasons the company's inability to raise affordable additonal capital. If part of the problem is that the stock has been so beaten down because naked short selling took place, than naked short selling is very significant to he problem.

Souunds like all SEC is doing is enforcing a law that was already in place. I never read into it that the SEC is somehow trying to lay all the blame of the current financial crisis on short sellers. It comes down to every little bit helps. If you agree that if a company has 100 million shares outstanding, there should not be 150 million shares being traded at any one time, than you wouldn't mind the SEC enforcing the law. The article is saying that short sellers are not the problem. They're right. They're not. Illegal short selling is the problem, or least a major contribution to the problem. Some of the financial related stocks' debt is continually being downgraded by Moody's credit ratings, siting among the reasons the company's inability to raise affordable additonal capital. If part of the problem is that the stock has been so beaten down because naked short selling took place, than naked short selling is very significant to he problem.

I agree that the SEC should outlaw ALL naked short selling immediately. The practice is nothing more than counterfeiting shares and robbing legitimate stockholders. They should find the people behind this practice and put them in jail. I also agree that the up-tick rule should be reinstated immediately. How could the SEC allow this stuff to go on???

Put em all in a cell with BUBBA, then they will also get it shoved where the sun don't shine.

Bravo !!! All naked short selling should be banned -- it is essentially fraud -- you are selling something you don't have -- and in many cases, don't have any intention of acquiring.

Just fine or jail if there is fraud, failure to deliver. Why does this have to be so hard. Naked shorting is just a higher risk proposition, if the short does not follow through he gets fined, the broker gets fined and the buyer is made whole. Too bad that's not a sexy solution.

Anyone who quotes the uptick rule truly doesn't understand how shorting a stock actually works. As far as cracking down on shorts, it's a farce. If there were no short sellers, then the Dow would be at 8,000 right now, and the S&P would be south of 1,000. It's short covering that has partially kept the bottom from completely falling out of this market. Shorts are not evil, they are just trying to actually make money in a down market. If you don't like them, go out and buy the stock they are shorting and try to squeeze them. Something tells me that people are just jawing, and they wouldn't dare go long a crappy company just to stick it to the shorts.

Naked short selling is not only detrimental to honest investors but to the company itself and the many people whose retirement savings is based primarily on what their company's stock is doing. I've seen many good hard working people lose their entire retirement nest due to this illegal or overlooked practice.

go back to a legit short sale borrow stock IF AVAILABLE prior to being able to short must short by UPTICK RULE