May 11, 2009
I am in support of re-instating the short selling "uptick" rule.
I have major concerns with a variety of financial mechanisms that detract from a orderly, honest, and expanding economic system for our country.
On the surface, short selling is intended to help maintain an orderly system by dampening excessive excuberance in upward moving stock prices. It therefore makes sense to allow short selling while a stock is consistantly moving to new highs in its stock price. However, once a stock has started a progressive drop in stock price, the normal "long" owners of that stock should be able to bid it to its natural balance point. Unfortunately, persistent, aggressive short selling has been used as a psychological technique to demoralize the long stock holder into exiting a stock as a "mob" behavior instead of using rational thinking.
Personally, I am opposed to ALL short selling. However, if it is going to be allowed, the simple "uptick" rule as been reasonably effective at ensuring that short selling is primarily used when a stock is getting excessively overpriced rather than as a tool to force a breakdown of confidence where the goal is to pressure a company into bankruptcy where the fundamentals would never warrant such an action.