September 12, 2010
From the comments submitted by other citizens, we all seem to agree that short selling is not the individual investor's friend. We hear everyday how individual investors are not investing in equities any more. The one billion shares being traded per day do not represent what I do. I invest in the capitalist system. Not in puts, calls, options, the vix, arbitrage, currencies, or day trading. I invest in the future of a company so that company has funds to grow, sell products and services and employ more people. I invest for my retirement. Individual investors don't sell short or buy a stock to sell 5 minutes later. Just like the reason to buy a house should be to live in it and grow a family, not to "flip" it in two weeks. But that is another subject not for this page. The fact is, the purpose of the stock market has been changed. Trading and manipulation has caused the wild fluctuations in the market. New vehicles were created to use the stock market for gambling, not for investing. When mutual funds were being used for trading, the funds put restrictions on buying and selling within a short time, since the purpose of mutual funds is long term investing. That was the best thing that could have happened for the small investor. Traders then created ETFs so millions of shares could be traded in substituted vehicles similar to mutual funds.
If the SEC wants the stock market to be a vehicle for investing in the future of America and not the corrupted system it has become, then we need more regulation. Not only in short selling. But regulations that will stabilize the markets. No one should be allowed to buy and sell a share of stock within 24 hours. We need to return to basics. We should buy and sell equities based on fundamentals and not technical market conditions. If supply and demand would rule commodities, would a barrel of oil be priced at 70 dollars? Probably not.
Yes, please do disallow the selling of a share of stock that is not owned.