Subject: S7-18-21: WebForm Comments from Jason Peiffer
From: Jason Peiffer
Affiliation:

Aug. 16, 2022

August 16, 2022

 Fraud can be hidden in aggregates, and intraday fast-paced manipulation cannot be uncovered with T+1 alone. Things move very fast and crashes happen very fast. Granting all market participants a high-resolution view into short selling would allow them/us to see and then get out of the way when there is an approaching train. It would protect retail investors against sophisticated strategies by well-capitalized, dominant, and predatory funds. It would allow everyone, especially regulators and law enforcement, to detect more sophisticated fraudulent activity (eg we could examine activity around short and distort attacks at a high resolution).

The DOJ has recently focused on exactly this type of fraud, and empowering law enforcement is a prime benefit of transaction-by-transaction, high temporal resolution reporting. Retail investors deserve to be fully informed of the risks they are taking on when they purchase securities. The Chair Gary Gensler has highlighted that specific point many times. It is the SECs core mission to protect retail investors. It is time for them to be consistent with that mission, even if big funds complain about cost and inconvenience. Integrity is not free. Market integrity is not free. A truly free market does not happen without effort and inconvenience.

People have literally killed themselves as a result of short attacks. Allowing them at least the chance to see the danger they are stepping into is one of the most important things the Commission can do.

The solution to retail stepping into danger is not a few stupid videos. It is NOT a public relations problem, it is a policy problem. This rule, as written, is a strong protection for investors against the dangers of predatory selling and pump and dump schemes. It allows us to examine who published what and how short selling activity behaved around those publications.