August 26, 2008
Good Afternoon,
Please eliminate all short selling. While Wall Street gets rich, the retail investor or those investors who hold stocks in their retirement or pension funds are being robbed. How can a company borrow shares it does not own, force the price down and then make a ton of money. If the retail investor has no faith in the system, then people will not invest and will not participate in their 401k’s etc. Why save for retirement if wall street is going to rip you off. I cannot go into a bank and borrow someone elses money and inform them I will pay it back when I have reduced that asset by half. Why do you allow such a practice?
Look what has happened to the financial stocks. What retirement fund or pension does not have money invested in financials. I am also a retail investor and my stock has 3.5 million shares that are short. While Wall Street crooks manipulate my stock and trade it for profit and gain all day long, I am sitting there invested for the long term with my asset going down the drain.
If you want to own a stock, then buy it. If you don’t, then sell it, but please don’t borrow it to make money. Who is paying me interest when they borrow my asset? I don’t receive any interest, I just get a reduced asset price. There is nowhere else in the financial world that allows such lunacy
Please protect the real investor instead of catering to the trader. Protect the system and all it stands for and eliminate short selling period. If someone wants to place a hedge on their bet (traders again) then they can use options to do the very same thing.