May 5, 2009
I strongly urge you, on behalf of the millions of household investors out there, to reinstate the traditional uptick rule for short selling. And the rule I am referring to, is the traditional rule that was originally created after the stock market crash of the great depression. It is elementary to understand the affects of constant shorting against the market. I've recently heard of research being done on the effect of removing the uptick rule and it's foundation is flawed... the fact that the study was done over a period of time that did not reflect a distressed period when short selling has it's greatest impact on driving stock prices down. Removing the uptick rule was a move that was strictly geared towards institutional investors... they were the only beneficiaries and the elimination of the rule is unfair at it's greatest degree. Sellers who are making transactions with "borrowed" shares should not be able to have an equal impact on price as sellers who actually have shares in hand. Furthermore, naked shorting should be banned altogether.
I know (and understand) that institutional investors and ETF providors will come at you hard with their arguments, but please don't let it blind you to the facts of what truly worsened the last two great crashes of the stock market. Don't let them twist and bend the definition of fair. Let's focus on the effects short selling had on the last two crashes of great significance (when the uptick rule wasn't in effect) and focus on the fairness of selling stocks. People that own stocks and have shares in hand should have first priority of selling whenever they desire, people that borrow stocks for selling purposes should be able to sell borrowed shares with strings attached (such as having to sell higher than the current ask price), and people that are essentially selling stocks without borrowing them (naked shorting) should be stripped of that privelege altogether.
Let's clean this market up and let the market dictate price and trends, not greedy investors looking to profit on a companies demise.
Brad Zimmerman