The Uptick Rule Comes Home

While bears have and will always feast upon companies with broken business models, inflated earnings and undue stock prices, short sellers don't, by themselves, make a company die. If a company is meant to die, it will die (or at least once would). The uptick rule exists to slow, not stop, the process so cool heads get a chance to prevail. Why on earth the uptick rule was removed has always mystified me. It's about the sanest regulation yet devised for equity markets.

It involves no: reporting, capital requirements or compliance outside a little intraday auditing by the exchanges and broker/dealers. It's cheap, quick, powerful and has no sustaining effect on genuinely crappy businesses (the guy who bought from a short on a downtick was bidding anyway).

Three cheers for the return of the uptick rule.

Comments

[john s. gordon:]

todd - i approve your message.
> jack

Mar 12 08:25 AM