I would like to begin by thanking you for taking our comments. I have a few general comments before I attempt to address any of the points raised in your "Background and Discussion" and "Request for Comments" sections. To summarize my position: how is it possible that in an era of rapid trading in which computers execute thousands (or more) trades per second on any given security, that it is not possibly to simply and succinctly state the exact number of short positions taken against a given security (including synthetic shorts)?

1) make sure you receive correct data. 1a) if you don't, somehow make sure they do in penalties, that isn't pennies for short interest positions. Either make them relieve their position or ban them for trading for some time. 1b) don't let them self report giving them the option to lie. 2) ban dark pools. It does add liquidity, somehow. But at what cost? Especially with payment for order flow, these companies can front run any retail investors, without affecting market price, before the end of day. I want market transparency and fairness.

Hello and good morning/afternoon/evening. I'd like to start by thanking you for being open to comments from retail traders. I am not the most financially literate person in the room, as my experience investing has been limited to this year, but in that time I have made great strides in learning how our financial system functions. I parsed Regulatory Notice 21-19 myself so that I, as a young American and novice investor who looks forward to a lifetime of activity and learning in the free market, could provide my original thoughts. "A.

I'm a retail investor, of the style that invests my meager retirement in ETFs and other low-risk vehicles. I've recently become more interested in managing my own IRA and such, in part due to the fervor surrounding GME and other tremendously short sold stocks. This interest let me to reading extensively about short interest, reporting, FTDs, and the options techniques used to "hide" short positions from the lit market. At one point, during the January runup initally with GME, for a short while GME was >100% short.

FINRA 21-19 is a long overdue change. It is clear that the integrity of the United States market has been strained to the edge of disaster, in large part due to systemic risk developed under the regulatory authority of FINRA's outdated short interest reporting policy. While many of the policies mentioned in Regulatory Notice 21-19 address the general breadth of exploitable and ineffective reporting, they also leave significant specific gaps that could compromise the entirety of 21-19's purpose.

The time is now to fix this broken system. I am not leaving.

The confidence in the US market is waning and will collapse in time. For too long FINRA's out-dated short interest reporting policy has allowed malicious activities to continue with little to no oversight in the form of abusive and extraordinary over-leveraging of short positions. Many of the policies mentioned in Regulatory Notice 21-19 address the short interest ineffective reporting, yet, they also leave significant holes that compromise the entirety of 21-19's purpose, almost as if they were left this way.

If there was more transparency into short seller positions paired with the proposed enhanced reporting practices it could encourage a more fair market for all investors, not just those largest participants. When attempting to do research into short positions into some companies I had a long position in, the information was so sparse, and vague to say the least, you could not accurately assess the effect it was having on price discovery. We need short sellers need to be more closely monitored to have a fair and balanced market we can have confidence in.

Retail investors are losing faith in the market. I urge you to take action to regularly disclose all short positions, whether genuine or synthetic (through married options, for example) on a weekly basis. This will allow individual investors to make more informed decisions about which companies they should invest their money in and will resolve the question of whether bad actors are using illegal "naked" short sales to manipulate security prices.

While short sales can be an important market mechanic to send signals to protect investors from corrupt or inept corporate leadership, hidden short sales and hidden synthetic short sales work against a free and fair marketplace. If institutional and "big money" investors detect reasons to believe that the future success of a company is unlikely, hiding their short positions at best circumvents the reasoning for short sales in a free and fair market, and at worst encourages bad actors to commit price manipulation at the expense of individual retail investors.