June 23, 2009
Why reinstate the uptick rule? A month or so ago I received a phone call from a relative telling me to turn on one of the useless business channels, on it was a manager or either an Bear ETF or a bear mutual fund, the announcer asked what he was doing and he said selling food stocks, reporter was surprised and asked whether in this environment wasn't that stocks you should be buying, person acknowledged that was true but gave reasons for not shorting other sectors and concluded by saying we have to be short something so food it is. Sounds like a real good economic reason to short the sector
Now if you follow trading on a daily basis you will see that at just about the same time every day selling hits the market, 9:40 10AM etc and it is not just one trade, bids move away on all the electronic markets at the same time asked prices follow and a stock gets tanked later covering trades come in generally taking the stock a little higher, thought even the SEC could figure out something is going on on Mondays, think 4 Mondays have been up days since December is that a coincidence or a number of people establishing shorts for the week.
I spent 40 years on Wall street most of it in futures I tell people who asked me I would have wound up in jail had we ever down half of what is going on now in equities, uptick rule worked for years think it should just be put back in.