December 29, 2007
Jack Wedam
Private Investor
San Antonio Texas
Ms. Nancy M. Morris, Secretary
Securities and Exchange Commission
100 F. Street, NE
Washington, DC 20549-1090
Re: Comments on Proposed Amendments to Regulation SHO File No S7-19-07, Release No. 56213 and Rebuttal to the "Firms" Credit Suisse Securities (USA), LLC, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Lehman Brothers, Inc., Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner Smith Incorporated, Morgan Stanley Co., Incorporated, Piper Jaffiay Co., and State Street Global Markets, LLC dated October 19, 2007
December 29, 2007
Dear Secretary Morris:
I appreciate the opportunity to provide comments on the comment on the Long Sale Proposal.
I strongly believe that the Long Sale Proposal should be adopted for three primary reasons:
a. The "Firms" claims are exaggerated and self serving.
b. The Long Sale Proposal will increase transparency. Transparency is critical to maintaining public confidence in the equity markets. Transparency facilitates price detection or value assessment which is fundamentally critical to efficient free market function.
c. The "Firms" claim of exposing customers to the economic risk of adverse market price movements during the execution is without merit since it is inherent risk assumed by the customers prior to entering these potentially high payoff investments. The SEC has previously issued statements as far back as November 21, 2003.in which the SEC has stated it position about abusive and manipulative schemes http://www.sec.gov/rules/interp/34-48795.htm#P30_1427. Additionally this has also been discussed in the press. For example, see Torres, "Are Slam Dunks' on Troubled Stocks a Foul," Wall St. J., (February 1, 1991) (describing married puts as a "new weapon to raid' bad-news stocks.") see also Pulliam, "Bullet Strategy Makes Comeback as Trades Find a Way to Skirt Rules on Short Selling," Wall St. J., (October 14, 1998) Their customers knew the risks and made a decision to enter into the arrangement in return for high returns. The SEC should not have sympathy for those that knew ahead of time that they were entering into what is a high risk but high payoff speculative arrangement with their broker dealers.
Sincerely,
Jack M. Wedam
San Antonio, Texas