May 5, 2009
Bring back the up-tick rule.
Without the up-tick rule, companies can be ruined by short sellers.
If you leave the system as it is, you are ignoring (or perhaps are ignorant of) the destructive power of computerized investing.
Also, you would be assuming the absence of malevolent minds in the trading game.
Basis for my requests:
1. Gray Friday and Black Monday, October 1987. Programmed computers took the market down.
Once they got downward momentum established, mindless program after mindless program backed them up. Terrorists could do much the same through short selling in the absence of an uptick rule. But there was no Al Qaeda back then, by that name and with its organized nature.
2. Computers are stronger than you've given them credit for, in the absence of common sense thinking. All we have to do is turn our backs.
We must trust the SEC NOT to turn its back, assuming its members want the best for the world economy. (Is this too positive an assumption? We await the answer.)