Oct. 23, 2022
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear Sir or Madam, First, I would like to express my pleasure that the SEC has given me the opportunity to present my concerns. I think it is very important and welcome that the SEC addresses the concerns, opinions and suggestions of all investors in the U.S. stock market. About myself: At 61, I am a bit older in terms of years, but still quite young in terms of my stock market activities. I have been investing in stocks for just under two years. One motivation to do this is to invest a part of my (rather modest) assets in companies that I believe can contribute to solving acute problems with their concepts. As examples I would like to mention the companies Ideanomics (IDEX) in the e-mobility segment, Kalera (KAL) in the nutrition segment and Conformis (CFMS) in the health segment. My approach is constructive in nature. That is, I want the companies in which I invest to be successful and ultimately allow me, as a shareholder, to share financially in that success, whether by way of dividends or whether by way of rising share prices that allow me to sell my shares in the company at a profit. This approach contrasts with the approach of short selling, which I find destructive. Here, people speculate (or should I say bet?) that a company will fail and, in the best case, go bankrupt from the point of view of the short seller. To earn money with the misfortune of others is immoral in my opinion. That can't be the purpose of a stock market! In my opinion, it is literally criminal when financially strong fund companies abuse their market power (money, political connections, media influence) to deliberately drive ailing or up-and-coming companies into bankruptcy in order to make money along the way. Not only interesting business ideas may be lost, but also countless people may lose their jobs and thus face acute existential hardship. When asked why short-selling exists at all, one stock market expert told me that it has a market-clearing function, and that unfair companies are identified and made "harmless". I cannot follow this approach. In a market society, "weak" companies sooner or later disappear from the scene all by themselves, but before that they at least had the chance to do it right without being harassed by short-sellers. Perhaps my ideas regarding a fair, constructive stock market are richly naive. Nevertheless, I would like to politely ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the SEC, to critically and unsparingly scrutinize the actions of large fund companies, market makers and credit institutions to the extent to which these institutions do not use their dominant position in the market to enrich themselves illegally and not least also at the expense of private investors. Since I am unfortunately far too inexperienced and ignorant in matters of detail, I would like to refer at this point to the statements of the investor group "We The Investors" with regard to transparency, fairness and control in share trading. Yours sincerely Jens-Christian Schulze