Simply put, Short Sellers have for decades made the argument that disclosing their position makes them a target for Short Squeeze. However, they in many cases target legitimate companies with the sole purpose of attempting to "shake out" longs to make a profit. This is not the intended use or purpose of allowing short positions, which as I understand it is as a way to address fraudulent statements, find a companies true fair value or transfer of monies when a company is struggling / failing. In addition, Naked shorting has quite obviously run rampant in recent months with potentially BILLIONS of synthetic shares created to dilute the float value of stocks such as AMC And GME. This is pure Market Manipulation and has likely cost investors Billions of dollars, yet the Market Makers, Hedge Funds and Investment Banks that engage in or provide support for this activity are not punished. Fines, when they are levied are far less than the profit made by bad actors. Citadel agreed to pay $22 Million in 2017 without admitting guilt for findings from the SEC from 2007-2010 that they misrepresented stock pricing (Similar to 'Best execution' with Payment for Order Flow?) Considering they transact 40% + of the Markets liquidity they obviously made Billions, likely 100's of Billion's in the 3 years of misrepresentation, but were only fined $22 million, and it was 7 years after the fact. How is that a fair and just punishment for an obvious bad actor? In 2008-2009 Wall Street "elites" were bailed out after acting in extremely risky manner which assisted in creating the financial crisis. However, no one was punished for their role in the resulting crash and in fact some of the bad actors received bailouts while many outside of the top 10% "Elite" were in financial ruin. We have super high speed internet and microchips the size of your thumbnail that can process data insanely fast. Why do we need Market Makers to provide liquidity? Buyers and Sellers across brokerages should be more than capable of interacting together directly without an untrustworthy third party taking profit for providing no value and in fact getting rich at the expense of everyone else by cheating. Thank you,
Chad Thomas Comment On Regulatory Notice 21-19
Simply put, Short Sellers have for decades made the argument that disclosing their position makes them a target for Short Squeeze. However, they in many cases target legitimate companies with the sole purpose of attempting to "shake out" longs to make a profit. This is not the intended use or purpose of allowing short positions, which as I understand it is as a way to address fraudulent statements, find a companies true fair value or transfer of monies when a company is struggling / failing. In addition, Naked shorting has quite obviously run rampant in recent months with potentially BILLIONS of synthetic shares created to dilute the float value of stocks such as AMC And GME. This is pure Market Manipulation and has likely cost investors Billions of dollars, yet the Market Makers, Hedge Funds and Investment Banks that engage in or provide support for this activity are not punished. Fines, when they are levied are far less than the profit made by bad actors. Citadel agreed to pay $22 Million in 2017 without admitting guilt for findings from the SEC from 2007-2010 that they misrepresented stock pricing (Similar to 'Best execution' with Payment for Order Flow?) Considering they transact 40% + of the Markets liquidity they obviously made Billions, likely 100's of Billion's in the 3 years of misrepresentation, but were only fined $22 million, and it was 7 years after the fact. How is that a fair and just punishment for an obvious bad actor? In 2008-2009 Wall Street "elites" were bailed out after acting in extremely risky manner which assisted in creating the financial crisis. However, no one was punished for their role in the resulting crash and in fact some of the bad actors received bailouts while many outside of the top 10% "Elite" were in financial ruin. We have super high speed internet and microchips the size of your thumbnail that can process data insanely fast. Why do we need Market Makers to provide liquidity? Buyers and Sellers across brokerages should be more than capable of interacting together directly without an untrustworthy third party taking profit for providing no value and in fact getting rich at the expense of everyone else by cheating. Thank you,