May 6, 2009
As an Individual Investor I feel the need to convey my feelings regarding shorting the market. Never in my 35 years of investing have I seen so much manipulation of the market and ruining of companies for the sake of profit. Our capital markets dynamics have changed from investing capital into good companies with the expectation of solid profits and returns to legalized gambling and corruption manipulated by the large fund managers. Current practices such as naked-shorts and the removal of the uptick rule allow large amounts of capital from these large fund managers to influence the downward momentum of a companies stock and unbridled this significantly reduces the value of the company to the point a good company can fail as a result.
As an investor, I certainly want to make money on my investments, however, to be allowed to manipulate a companies stock price through shorting is certainly not fair to investors but to traders. This practice artificially devalues a company for the sake of profit to fund shareholders. We are in the process of rebuilding our country's infrastructure,and markets, our companies and rules by which we govern our banking and capital markets.
I would encourage the SEC to develop rules of engagement that promote investing and discourage manipulation of a single company's stock. The naked -shorts and uptick rules will help but I don't think they go far enough ...