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. 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. I understand that weekly reporting will be argued against from a resource perspective, however it is such an important part to a free and fair capitalist market that the resources would be well spent in terms of improved worldwide investor confidence in the sanctuty of the U.S. capital markets.
Peter Comment On Regulatory Notice 21-19
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. 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. I understand that weekly reporting will be argued against from a resource perspective, however it is such an important part to a free and fair capitalist market that the resources would be well spent in terms of improved worldwide investor confidence in the sanctuty of the U.S. capital markets.