Cardinal Energy Group Inc. (fka CEGX)

[kanola]

The drama surrounding naked shorting has all the elements of a John Grisham novel. Sly, blue blood institutions conspire with shadowy hedge fund cowboys to unmercifully assault a well-meaning but outgunned CEO in his quest for shareholder value. Offshore accounts and corrupt foreign officials veil the crimes for decades until finally being thrust into the open through the hyper-caffeinated efforts of hundreds of message board denizens throughout cyberspace.


Due largely to concerns raised by microcap CEOs and their shareholders, naked shorting is a hot topic on message boards. Opinions range widely on how common it is. Those claiming it pervades the markets and foreshadows a systemic meltdown are met with equally fervent arguments calling it an over-hyped, isolated problem that is becoming the grassy knoll conspiracy theory of Wall Street.

Everyone agrees, however, that risks of naked shorting are heightened in the microcap world. The sheer number of small public companies, combined with high volatility and an almost inevitable need for financing, make detecting this hard-to-prove crime that much more difficult for the microcap CEO. Although the odds seem small that a particular company will be victimized, there is no authoritative data indicating how many microcaps are being naked shorted.

Keeping those odds in perspective, then, this primer is for microcap CEOs curious about the naked shorting fuss. On the off chance that a company attracts naked shorts, CEOs should recognize that there is despairingly little that can be done to stop it from occurring. Due to the nature of the crime, legal expertise may not help.

Although there seem to be few bulletproof ways to stop naked shorts, there are a handful of things a proactive CEO can do to reduce the odds of being blindsided by this notorious lot. This primer includes a rough sketch of how naked shorting works and a brief familiarization with the main players. A worst-case scenario of what it means to be targeted by naked shorts is presented, as are suggestions for wary CEOs. The final section contains a list of links with more about the intriguing world of naked shorting.

What is naked shorting and why should a CEO care?

In its simplest terms, naked shorting involves selling shares of stock that don't exist. It's performed routinely by market-makers to keep an orderly market, but it is illegal when done to manipulate a company's stock price. Only when someone intends to drive down the stock price is naked shorting breaking the law. Throughout the rest of this overview, any reference to naked shorting will refer to the illegal variety.

It's also worth noting the important distinction between shorting and naked shorting. The former is perfectly legal and occurs extensively as either a way for an investor to mitigate risk or as a bet that a company's share price will decrease (i.e. the short-seller or "short" believes the company is overvalued). Despite the wary glances often cast upon them, shorts are an essential part of a robust market and are often the first to discover financial fraud, as in the case of Enron.

A short will sell borrowed shares as a bet against a company because he believes the price will eventually drop. These borrowed shares come from his broker, which loans the short a certain number of shares (not dollars). As soon as the short receives the borrowed shares in his account, he sells them immediately for cash, which goes to his brokerage account. The short still has that pesky loan to pay back, though, and does so by waiting for the price of the stock to drop. Then he buys some cheaper shares using money from the same pool of cash he received after the original sale, gives the broker his shares back, and keeps whatever cash is left in his account.

Naked shorts, in contrast, are much more manipulative – they sell short shares that don't exist and then attempt to actively lower the company's share price through constant short-selling pressure. By using pretend shares, of which there is an unlimited supply, naked shorts can effectively control the share price through this constant pressure, eventually driving the price of a company's shares into the basement.

Where do these fake shares come from? Naked shorts can create them out of thin air, depending on your point of view, due to either (a) glaring inefficiencies in the back-office world of certificate transfers, or (b) institutionalized fraud on a massive scale. Either way, the effects can be disastrous for companies who are victimized.


Read the rest here:

http://www.hawkassociates.com/ir/white/shorts.cfm