Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

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I routinely write call and put options . . . just not standing on the offer for both at the same strike price at the same time . . . not because I don't want to but because I'm not allowed to engage in "market making."

Why should there be special provileges for MM's anyway? If they don't want to make markets, they should step aside, and let the market transact like electronic network tradings. Theoretically the spread could widen, but that's what MM's predicted when NASDAQ moved to electronic trading . . . reality turned out that the electronic trading resulted in the narrowest spread ever.

I'm not for banning shorts (who are the buyers of last resort before government socialist intervention, and a moderating influence at market extremes at both ends), but naked shorting privilege is quite unnecessary for writing puts. If share borrowing is difficult on a particular issue, make smaller offers and raise the offer price on puts! There shouldn't be an unlimited number of put contracts available for buying to begin with if sharing borrowing is impossible. Options are delivery contracts, not future contracts with cash-settle requirement.