I have some contacts in the industry that did a quick check with three major hedge funds out of NYC six months ago and the total exceeded 50 million naked short... that's just the a small sampling and relatively at random and frankly I was shocked the numbers for just three firms could be so staggeringly high.
I too wish for the SEC to do something but I don't think they ever will. Their interest as they have made clear by consistent stonewalling for over two years, despite an outcry of grassroots shareholders and small companies to the contrary, is to protect the large institutions that have supported this naked shorting scandal.
I should point out that the naked short problem if resolved suddenly would have a cost to major institutions estimated to be in the trillions of dollars... the degree to which naked shorting has become an abuse and an excess would simply shock anyone. While I am generally a conservative politically, I can also see the problem in exposing this problem now right before an election. The naked shorting problem has existed through numerous administrations, both Republican and Democrat alike and they share the blame for allowing the abuses to continue.
The NASD has adopted some recent rule changes to try and curb some of the abuse from Canadian and offshore but these efforts are very weak and unlikely to have much impact despite some hype to the contrary. The SEC on the other hand has literally done nothing and the one company that is trying to opt out of the system of abuse and has appealed to the SEC for several years to help protect them, has recently filed suit against the SEC for neglgence and conspiracy to aid the systematic defrauding of small investors.
I have personaly spoken to agents of the SEC about this problem and their attitutde has universally been that they doubt there is really much of a problem except in a few cases and in any event, pink sheets companies aren't realy real companies anyway so they deserve this treatment... an amazing attitude given that their charter is to protect the small investor while the hedge funds that they enable to prey on small companies are out to destroy small companies to reap a profit. Sickening.
All securities are held bt DTCC as the clearing agent holding certificiates, only in the case of DTCC they prefer virtual certificates that they hold in "pooled" accounts... fancy verbage for the fact that they do not attach an actual cert number to individual certificates and this allows them to let hedge funds to short the SAME certificates an unlimited number of times since there is never any accounting that holds them to being able to short only a single certificate (the law)
DTCC and the SEC derive funds based on the volume of trading that is done... naked shorting vastly increases the volume and therefore the revenue to both organizations... no conflict of interest here! And these are the very organizations that are supposed to be protecting us from fraud such as this.
AI
