- The Slide for Commodity Stocks Continues
- How Strong Is The Recovery?
- The Dow Down, But Not Out
- Bad News Hits Traders Hard
- Traders Already Eyeing Earnings
- In The Holiday Mood
- A Broad Advance
- Stocks & Ben Both Hold Their Own
- Traders On Bernanke's Hearings: "Nothing Good Will Come From This"
- Why The Fed Did Not Cause Stocks To Sink
|
CNBC'S MOST SHARED
- A Goldman Trading Scandal?
- Rich People With A Death Wish
- Facebook Director Sees 'Billions' in Revenue in 5 Years
- The Threat of Ballooning Pensions
- Lehman CEO: Firm Deserved Bailout or 'Wind Down'
- FedEx Sees Signs of a Turnaround: Report
- Texting And Driving Worse Than Drinking and Driving
- Market's Monday Blues
- Hey, What's Up Doc?
- Judge Gives Control of Jackson Estate to Executors
- March Lows Will Hold — So Buy Equities: Strategists
- Lacoste Runs Full Page Ad With Roddick Loss
- Brandt: Bing, The Little Search Engine That Couldn't
- 5-Star Manager's 5 Top Stocks
- Hey, What's Up Doc?
- Busch: Summertime Blues Hits Investors
- Chadwick: Recession and Scandals Pave the Way for Romney 2012
- Art Cashin: The S&P's 'Head and Shoulders' Number
- Michael Jackson: Death And Taxes
- Second Half: Wait For Pullbacks, Then Buy the Best
- Accused Ex-Goldman Sachs Programmer Out on Bail
- Discover Shares Fall on Word of Stock Offering
- California General Obligation Bond Rating Cut
- GM to Get Final $20 Billlion From US This Year
- World Trade Center Developer Threatens Arbitration
- The Weirdest Currencies on Earth
- Judge Gives Control of Jackson Estate to Executors
- Recession Special: Wine Cheaper Than Water!
RSS FEED
More Videos
Text Size 
The Dow rallied 250 points shortly after 1 pm ET when the UK government announced they were banning short selling in financial stocks until January, and would require hedge funds to reveal their short positions.
While most stock traders here in the U.S. are in favor of some sort of "brake" on short selling, most are not in favor of an outright ban on it. If we ban short selling, should we ban long buying too? Why not a bank holiday, and just close the markets?
There's clearly growing pressure to do the same thing here in the U.S. But perhaps other moves that are less drastic would be sufficient:
(Contd.)
________________________________________
The Panic of '08
- Is It Time to Buy Low?
- Slideshow: Victims of the Credit Crunch (So Far)
- Crescenzi: Scary Chill in Commercial Paper
________________________________________
1) The SEC has made it clear they are conducting house-to-house searches of hedge funds to determine if there are any trading abuses; they are also seeking approval to force the funds to report their short positions regularly.
2) expect more "investigations": the New York Attorney General said they have started a "probe" of short selling in AIG, [AIG
Loading...
()
] Morgan Stanley, and Lehman [LEH
Loading...
()
].
3) The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the nation's largest pension fund, has stopped lending shares of Goldman Sachs[GS
Loading...
()
] and Morgan Stanley [MS
Loading...
()
] for the purpose of shorting the stocks. They followed the California State Teachers' Retirement System, which also stopped lending the shares.
4) most traders also support bringing back the rule that requires that traders seeking to short a stock can only do it on a plus tick (a trade where the stock moves up), which is supposed to make it more difficult to quickly amass a short position.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes