Biggest News in Years! SEC to restore the UPTICK rule!! FINALLY!!!

Yes, because when they banned short selling in financials last year, it really helped! ... NOT.

Reinstating the uptick rule is nothing but a bullshit feel good policy to make longs believe all the problems are solved.

Who are these ethical investors? If you are going to be in the stock market, you need to learn to trade. If you are not shorting anything, you are missing 50% of the moves.

I guess ethical investors must be the ones that bought stocks like Enron and refused to short it when it turned into a scam.

Shorting the bank stocks is not only ethical, its capitalism at its best. If these banks screwed up by trading CDO's and destroyed their balance sheets, why stay long and lose? Short the hell out of them and make money!

yeah this uptick thing is nothing but a way of letting the market know they are trying. it has very little effect on a big volume stock.

I dont think it is going to matter really. you can still short just fine. Plus does the uptick rule even apply to futures?? In the end we have bigger problems then the uptick rule can solve on its own

Does this mean we'll get a "down tick" rule to prevent ethical traders from getting carried away with their long postitions..lol j/k

maybe....when the nasdaq gets back over 5k....

Strange that during the tech bubble and Nasdaq 5000, nobody had any problems with longs being able to buy on an uptick

Why did they not ban buying on upticks? It would have saved the economy!

In my opinion, frivolous buying is far more dangerous than shorting.

100% agreed...
but...
its psycology...#1 nobody minds when things are "too good to be true"
#2 nobody wants to know when things are worse than
they ever thought...plus shorting just has a negative
persona...and this is America...we are positive by nature...
betting on the negative...oh no you dont...not here...

Dont listen to me cause Im clueless, but it seems like tampering with the natural market.. I guess you can look at it as "medicine" then it should used briefly, then stoped when the market is healthy. You dont give medicine endlessly, if this makes any sense.

i agree, this might make some people happy for a while but then its time to get rid of it. next time maybe the morons will bring it back soon enough to make a difference. maybe they should make a rule that if the market falls 15% the rule comes back for a month. they should have brought it back when we were at 12k not at 6800

No offense, but any analogy based on the stock market performance during the last 18 months is a bad analogy.

I assume by "ethical investors", the op is referring to traders who actually pay for the stocks they trade as opposed to "borrowing" them. I'm personally not a fan of shorting, especially in severely declining markets (like now), but I wouldn't call it "unethical". Obviously, bad borrowing practices are partially responsible for this entire mess so I have a hard time listening to any argument that trading stocks on credit is good for the market/economy. Ethics aside, not everyone can afford to sit in front of a computer all day and trade stocks.

I'm pretty sure shorting could be outlawed entirely and capitalism would be just fine. There is no real evidence that shorting drives stock prices down, but it certainly doesn't drive them up, either. My hope is that the market recovers enough to make this a non-issue.

I can appreciate your efforts in putting your point across, however there are many forces at work which require the ability to short to make for efficient markets.

When you put an order into your broker to buy some stock, he puts the order in to a market maker or a trader on the trading desk. If your firm does not have the stock in their inventory, they will sell you the stock and go short on it until such time that they can buy it back to flatten their trade.

The specialists on the NYSE floor literally long and short stocks all day long to make for efficient and liquid markets.

Do not be fooled, banning short selling, or implementing the uptick rule just screws the small investors who have absolutely no effect on the markets.

Shorting most definitely drives stocks down, ever heard of a bear raid? Shorting ALSO most definitly drives stocks up! Have you ever witnessed a short covering rally? Today was partially a short covering rally, tomorrow, after the markets sell off in the early morning, if they bounce back, just watch the short covering rally in the afternoon as shorts scramble to get out of positions.

Shorting creates liquidity and helps the markets rebound.

Anybody that calls shorting unethical or evil has absolutely no clue about the markets and should stick to keeping their money in the low paying CD's and your Grandmothers bonds.

Agree on all the points. Well said
Anything can turn around this sever economic condition for the sake of millions of families whom either they lost their entire retirement savings and those whom lost their job. Is welcome. If this is what it takes to hell with the shorting and the shorter?

^ Very insightful...thanks!

Which part? The grandmother bonds part?

Nah...I think there was some mention of scrambling in Jessica Simpson's daisy duke shorts or something.

Exactly right. Shorting provides the needed liquidity to go buy and sell stocks in the market. If you re-instate the up-tick rule, your essentially creating an illiquid market where prices can be easier to fix(manipulate).

Without the ability to short a stock through the common, your essentially going to create distortions in the market. Common shorting is a function of the market, it cannot be replaced nor put restrictions on, to try to change the market outcome. It simply will not work. Besides, the short sellers have many other ways to nag a stock down without even touching the common.

While I agree with you that the short selling does tend to hurt the small investor even more so that the fund investor, both classes of investors are still affected one way or the other, given that we are living in a market enviornment where timing and liquidity are imperative for survival.

jessica simpson..mm mm. I even like her chunky style

SHhhhhhhhhh!!!!

Dont spill all the secrets... if they ever find out that selling naked calls is even more effective, they will ban that too!

Ohhhhhh, Ok.

How about artificially price fixing the CDS market to make believe a company will default on its capital and then short some common or buy puts to hedge the position. Not only are you making money on the puts/short but your collecting the risk premium that you sold.

ohhh, ohhh, what about synthetic put action, ohhh one more, never mind, I will not spoil the remaining 3 ways of "shorting" a stock.