Yeah, bdahl385, definitely don't need to be worried about that. You bought the shares, they are yours. If your broker and/or their MM are selling shares they don't actually have then they will be responsible for getting real shares. That's why some short squeezes can cause the price to go up over 1000% in a very short time... they have to get real shares and if they can't do it by causing a panic sell-off then they must raise the price to attract REAL sellers.
Your shares or my shares are never really counted as "air shares" or real shares. I doubt in many cases that brokerages even "know" what is going on and it is left in the hands of the MMs because this way they can say they weren't a part of it. A MM has a "pool" of shares in HMGP. As an example, he might have 5mil real shares and 2mil short shares (total of 7mil in people's accounts but they only really bought 5mil of them!). All the laws are setup such to make this all very "vague" and mysterious. The days of electronic computer trading are a blessing but also a curse.
The real problem is the government doesn't want to fix the problem.
The TA knows exactly how many o/s and a/s shares there are but that does nothing for a MM who sells shares they don't actually have. The TA would know those certs that were requested by investors but would not know the number of shares held in people's electronic accounts. People say "well, HMGP trades in certs only" but that is misleading... what's the timeframe on that? I can guarantee you that each trade I make a cert does not then get followed up with a cert request for that amount.
It is amazing to me how the government can track that the steak in my little corner grocery came from a cow named Betty Sue born on x date at x farm and slaughtered on x at x location but can't keep track of naked shorting or exactly how many shares exist in ALL brokerage accounts for a particular company. I'm sure they could but they don't want to know the answer. Even spin offs don't work to fix the problem in most cases because they are usually done with ELECTRONIC shares and if you can have fake shares of a real company it is nothing to make fake electronic shares of the spinoff.
The best way to combat these people is to do what Keith has done and that is no shifty financing. We are in very good shape there as MMs often "win" at this because they can drive a company into the dirt that relies on shares to keep the doors open and this is not the case with Hemi. The way to force a win is to continue to drill wells and have production increasing. There will be a point where this little company will get some attention and this will eventually happen with more wells and higher production. The MMs will lose as the company continues to grow and the buying pressure becomes too great for them to "risk" continued additional shorting.
