May 8, 2009
I became a reg rep. in 1967 at Newburger Loeb Co. and have been involved in buying and selling stocks for a living ever since. I have enjoyed selling short from time to time and have made big profits in certain cases. 1)I think long sellers should have priority over short sellers rather than have to get a lower price due to the market imbalance caused by a flood of unrestricted market sell orders. After all they bought and paid for the stock and there will not be a fail. 2) Selling on downticks makes it too easy to manipulate prices. Rather a short seller can just put large sell short orders in on the offer side of the market so the market will know of the offer and take their turn without having such a depressing influence on the price. All sellers should want the highest price. If a seller is trying to cause a lower price by his selling it is a form of manipulation which under certain circumstances is illegal. Over leveraged trading causes huge volatility and crashes. Nothing could be more over levered than naked short selling and this must be prohibited and STRICTLY ENFORCED. It is obvious to me that too much volatility has been caused by the suspension of the uptick rule. Why would the uptick rule hurt markets? There would still be plenty of short selling but we would have more stable prices.