February 19, 2010
1. Please, reinstate the Up-Tick Rule We ordinary investors do not have a level playing field without it. The SEC was foolish to allow it to expire in the first place contributing unwittingly to one of the greatest meltdowns in history. It was disappointing as an investor to see you investor up all day up until 3:45pm and then to have it tank the last 10-15 minutes due to the institutional and hedge fund manipulators. You should investigate collusion too.
2. Crack down on naked short selling. Require stock certificate #s when a short sale needs to be covered, including ETFs. If the shorting investor doesn't even have access to a share to short how can the SEC allow that to occur? Consider when some companies were shorted shares far beyond the total number of real outstanding shares. Something is very wrong when the SEC allows this form of manipulation to occur and prevents ordinary investors from investing in a level playing field.
3. I firmly believe that if the SEC fails to reinstitute the up-tick rule, then it needs to create multiple markets for investors. One for the ordinary individual with less than $1M invested and a separate market for those investors that have more than $1M including institutional investors, hedge funds, mutual funds, etc.
4. It is unfair to the typical mom and pop investor for the SEC to allow them to be taken advantage of unwittingly. It amounts to a redistribution of wealth from the have nots to the haves precisely what happened in the fall of 2008
5. A Wind-Fall Capital Gains Tax of 51% should be instituted on excessive profits from short sales. The same should happen for these exorbitant bonuses that are paid to the investment bank employees and the money put in a fund for the FDIC and SPIC.