Shabba

The SEC's 'Sacred Cow' List: Where Are WaMu and Wachovia?

I think your data is wrong. It doesn't make any sense for the finanicals to have a lower short interest than the S&P 500. In fact it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and I gotta say that your data must be wrong. These stocks have been decimated. I wonder if this includes "naked shorts". How are they measuring this, is it the average short interest at the end of the day, or what? I've seen a lot of these companies exchange 20+% of their total shares in one day. This has to be massive short selling.

The SEC Panics

Hey Maw,

I think if you're trading with a mainstream broker you're fine. If not I would just give them a call. I think it's impossible to know where exactly the shares come from.

And selling short has IMMENSE value to it. If you can't sell short, the only position you could take in equities (excluding options, etc. I'm just talking purely equities) is that they will appreciate. Equities are mispriced all the time, and causing people to only be able to make one-sided bets will cause them to be even more mispriced. It would really screw up the pricing and cause even worse bubbles than what we see now. It's naked shorting that is ridiculous and should have been banned a long time ago.

The SEC Panics

The SEC is doing what it should be doing, keeping the markets honest and fair. What they are trying to regulate is "naked" short selling. It's where people are selling shares that they DON'T have. This shouldn't be going on anywhere, in any stock. It's especially bad in these stock though because of the recent news.

I remember a day last week where there were 300+ million shares of FRE traded. There are only about 650 million shares in the company available and institutional ownership is about 95%. What is basically going on is that people are just rapid fire short selling the stocks dozens of times in a day, covering, and then shorting again. All the while they don't have any of the shares they are selling.

And the Ackman plan, give me a friggin break. The guy is short the stock! His plan for the companies will make him a fortune, if I were a news editor I would be embarrassed to publish the plan. It's ridiculous. I hope Ackman gets taken out to the woodshed on his short positions. These companies have problems (and they should given this is the worst housing bust EVER) but they aren't insolvent.