When I buy and hold a stock, like AMC, the obvious hope and intent for me is that the price will go up and I will make a profit. So it doesn’t make sense to me that an entity that holds my shares for me, like Robinhood for example, can lend my shares to someone else then the borrower uses my shares to short and drive down the price. They benefit by achieving their goal of lowering the price, the middleman makes and keeps for themselves interest on the loaning of my shares, some of these entities make it difficult to impossible to turn off share lending. Yet I, the supposed legitimate owner of the share, am the only one who doesn’t benefit in the equation. How is that fair or reasonable? Also, the use of dark pools for 60+% of transactions in certain stocks in a manipulative fashion, the PFOF profit making of the backs of retail investors, these should be thoroughly investigated and if being used inappropriately should be punished at a level that makes it unprofitable to continue. Wipe out ALL the ill-gotten gains, then add punitive fines on top. (Personally, I think some of this behavior is so egregious there should be prison time, but we all know that doesn’t happen to folks like them) Ensure the investors actually damaged by the behavior are compensated appropriately, not a check for $1.25, 3 years later. Otherwise, you are really just taking your cut and letting the cheaters know, if you make a billion cheating retail investors, we’ll take a few million of the top and let you keep the rest. Why would they stop? Sounds like a great deal if you can get it. In addition, allowing naked shorting to continue in a seemingly endless fashion, sneaky tricks to hide shorts and kick the can down the road on FTDs. If an entity consistently fails to deliver why are they allowed to continue borrowing? Why aren’t they forced to deliver? If they clearly have money to borrow shares, pay interest, manipulate the price down, then they should be made to use that money to meet their existing obligations to deliver in a timely manner. It just shows that, unless forced, then never intended to deliver. They desire to grind it down using other people’s property until they destroy yet another American company. Well, we don’t want it destroyed. Streaming is great, but after a year + in lockdown, many people want the option to GO OUT to a movie with PEOPLE, and share an experience. Those shorting AMC miscalculated the value of that to us common folk. They made a bad bet. If they want to keep doubling down on that bet they should at least have to use their own actual shares to do it. Not ours, and not counterfeit shares created out of thin air. Manipulating price discovery by holding retail orders in the dark pool should be illegal and heavily punished. You have millions of retail investors watching this unfold. What you do now will affect the perception of the fairness and transparency of American markets literally for generations to come. We’ve seen Wall Street and banks and other market players destroy the economy over and over and always get bailed out while the middle class lose homes, retirement savings, everything. Stop coddling them and start working for us, the average American people.
Staci Melton Comment On Regulatory Notice 21-19
When I buy and hold a stock, like AMC, the obvious hope and intent for me is that the price will go up and I will make a profit. So it doesn’t make sense to me that an entity that holds my shares for me, like Robinhood for example, can lend my shares to someone else then the borrower uses my shares to short and drive down the price. They benefit by achieving their goal of lowering the price, the middleman makes and keeps for themselves interest on the loaning of my shares, some of these entities make it difficult to impossible to turn off share lending. Yet I, the supposed legitimate owner of the share, am the only one who doesn’t benefit in the equation. How is that fair or reasonable? Also, the use of dark pools for 60+% of transactions in certain stocks in a manipulative fashion, the PFOF profit making of the backs of retail investors, these should be thoroughly investigated and if being used inappropriately should be punished at a level that makes it unprofitable to continue. Wipe out ALL the ill-gotten gains, then add punitive fines on top. (Personally, I think some of this behavior is so egregious there should be prison time, but we all know that doesn’t happen to folks like them) Ensure the investors actually damaged by the behavior are compensated appropriately, not a check for $1.25, 3 years later. Otherwise, you are really just taking your cut and letting the cheaters know, if you make a billion cheating retail investors, we’ll take a few million of the top and let you keep the rest. Why would they stop? Sounds like a great deal if you can get it. In addition, allowing naked shorting to continue in a seemingly endless fashion, sneaky tricks to hide shorts and kick the can down the road on FTDs. If an entity consistently fails to deliver why are they allowed to continue borrowing? Why aren’t they forced to deliver? If they clearly have money to borrow shares, pay interest, manipulate the price down, then they should be made to use that money to meet their existing obligations to deliver in a timely manner. It just shows that, unless forced, then never intended to deliver. They desire to grind it down using other people’s property until they destroy yet another American company. Well, we don’t want it destroyed. Streaming is great, but after a year + in lockdown, many people want the option to GO OUT to a movie with PEOPLE, and share an experience. Those shorting AMC miscalculated the value of that to us common folk. They made a bad bet. If they want to keep doubling down on that bet they should at least have to use their own actual shares to do it. Not ours, and not counterfeit shares created out of thin air. Manipulating price discovery by holding retail orders in the dark pool should be illegal and heavily punished. You have millions of retail investors watching this unfold. What you do now will affect the perception of the fairness and transparency of American markets literally for generations to come. We’ve seen Wall Street and banks and other market players destroy the economy over and over and always get bailed out while the middle class lose homes, retirement savings, everything. Stop coddling them and start working for us, the average American people.