SPO Networks Inc (SPOI)

[Sal1]

PART 2

Naked shorts in the United States

Naked short selling is a case of short selling without first arranging a borrow. If the stock is in short supply, finding shares to borrow can be difficult. The seller may also decide not to borrow the shares, in some cases because lenders are not available, or because of the costs of lending. When shares are not borrowed within the clearing time period and the short-seller does not tender shares to the buyer, the trade is considered to have "failed to deliver."[13] Nevertheless, the trade will continue to sit open or the buyer may be credited the shares by the DTCC until the short-seller either closes out the position or borrows the shares.[5]

It is difficult to measure how often naked short selling occurs. Fails to deliver are not necessarily indicative of naked shorting, and can result from both "long" transactions (stock purchases) and short sales.[4][14] Naked shorting can be invisible in a liquid market, as long as the short sale is eventually delivered to the buyer. However, if the covers are impossible to find, the trades fail. Fail reports are published regularly by the SEC,[15] and a sudden rise in the number of fails-to-deliver will alert the SEC to the possibility of naked short selling. In some recent cases, it was claimed that the daily activity was larger than all of the available shares, which would normally be unlikely.[13]