Also, to think that short sellers can relentlessly sell a stock down lower is absurd. Just in this past week, I tried to sell short several stocks with IB that were not available for short sale. Shares have to be available to be sold short.
Quote from flytiger:
Someone paid people at theSEC to push thru the downtick rule change. Somebody came up with naked shorting, fails. Somebody came up with subprime to fleece everybody. The end result of this will be excessive regulation which will kill everybody here. You can't rob the same bank forever. Do some reading. See what will happen in our Press over the next 60 days. We'll be reading these articles in the NY Times.
Quote from timetotrade:
The SEC did not just decide to eliminate the uptick rule on a "whim". It was studied for several years. This quote is from the SEC website---
"On July 28, 2004, the Commission issued an order creating a one-year pilot temporarily suspending the tick test and any short sale price test of any exchange or national securities association for certain securities. The pilot was created so that the Commission could study the effectiveness of short sale price tests. The Commission's Office of Economic Analysis and academic researchers provided the Commission with analyses of the empirical data obtained from the pilot. In addition, the Commission held a roundtable to discuss the results of the pilot. The general consensus from these analyses and the roundtable was that the Commission should remove price test restrictions because they modestly reduce liquidity and do not appear necessary to prevent manipulation. In addition, the empirical evidence did not provide strong support for extending a price test to either small or thinly-traded securities not currently subject to a price test."
See http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2007/2007-114.htm
Quote from FightTheFuture:
I thought ET was a site for traders. Obviously the non traders, the buy and holders, have seen their positions lose value and do not believe fundamentals caused the market downturn.
They see nothing wrong with the mind numbing stupidity of companies like Bear Stearns over leveraged, 30 to 1 on bad debt instruments that wiped out all of their capital. They need to blame something they also don't understand, the uptick rule and shorting.
This is the worst financial crisis in decades and the market is only down a paltry 12 - 14%.
The uptick rule reinstated will not protect you.
For any fool that has lost big on an individual stock like Bear Stearns, the rule of thumb, especially for non traders, and those that cannot tolerate much loss is to not have more than 4% of total assets in any one stock. ( So what do they do? They put it all in one industry or sector!) Stocks will always collapse regardless of uptick rule or not.
What is Bear Stearns WORTH, $2 per share? Maybe that is why the price fell! It fell because of short selling!? Well, Cramer said so!
Drama Queen Cramer "claims that the repeal of the uptick rule has been a major component in the current market downturn, partially blaming it for taking the Dow from 14,000 to 12,000." He is beyond irresponsible. Deflecting all the blame on his bad calls and not even directing it to the proper cause. Can we get him fired? Imprisoned? His groupies will then write letters to Congress with tears smudging the ink.
Quote from flytiger:
Interesting you guys quote the SEC when it suits you. Patrick Byrne said in an interview employees at the SEC had "pre loaded Debit cards". The SEC is corrupt. you can't have an organization that size with just a few guys doing this, and think everything is ok. What in the world would be the reason of repealing it? Only one. It aids the hedge funds. Simple.
Before you guys post, read the previous posts. Long term for me is two days. It's not the point.
and for those that say Patrick Byrne crazy, try to find "exact pay" or First bank of Curaco on the web You can't. They wer e shut down. We're that close.