The Securities and Exchange Commission will consider at its Wednesday meeting the restoration of the "uptick rule," which allows short sales -- a bet that a stock's price will fall -- only when the last sale price was higher than the previous price.
Joe Magyer, senior analyst at The Motley Fool, doesn't think reinstating this rule is going is to help markets much.
(For the full Joe Magyer interview, please click on the left)
"I think people are kidding themselves if they think this bear market has anything to do with evil, wily, short sellers. Stocks are down because fundamentals are off, a lot of businesses are losing money. Could it hurt? I don’t see how repealing it could, but realistically, I don’t think we’re going to look back in five years and say, 'wow, it was that change in the uptick rule that saved us all from this disaster', Magyer tells CNBC.
Magyer also doesn't see gold as a hot prospect.
"I kind of think about gold the same way I think about stamps or art, or baseball cards. It has very little intrinsic value to it – it's basically just a really shiny, malleable metal – unlike say oil, which has a lot of industrial purpose," Magyer said.
"Sure, gold has some (value), but the reality is, most of the value in there is just driven by speculation and fear, unlike oil, natural gas, et cetera, that people actually buy and use for industrial application."
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Magyer thinks that the direction of gold is entirely driven by speculation and fear.
"Could gold spike on inflation? I would say that it could. But then again, there are certainly other commodities, like oil, which people could trade in, which should also do well if the dollar plummets, and has a lot more application," Magyer concludes.
