NASDAQ OMX/HESG OMG....clearing of stocks next month? Is it next month yet? It is! It is!
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 NASDAQ by Roger Schultz A new, stock clearing house will open in the U.S. in March that will right many of the wrongs perpetrated by the market makers, brokers, and hedge funds conducting business on the NASDAQ and OTC markets. The NASDAQ OMX has been approved to start the clearing of stocks next month. Currently, 92% of all stocks in the U.S. markets are cleared by the DTC, which is an arm of the Federal Reserve.
The problem for the market makers, brokers, and hedge funds, is all of their NSS (naked short selling) will have to be covered when companies jump to the No Nonsense NASDAQ OMX from the DTC, that for years looked the other way when this practice occurred.
A naked short sell is perpetrated when a buy order is placed by an individual for a stock and a market maker pulls those stocks out of thin air and puts the imaginary stocks into the individuals broker account. This practice has bankrupted countless marginal companies in the last 8 years. Many, if not most market makers are owned by the large banks and brokers on Wall street.
This practice of naked short selling artificially deluded the outstanding shares, making each share worth less causing a death spiral. At this point the brokers and hedge funds sell short, betting that the stock would further decline, which was a no brainer of course.
Almost all of these affected companies did not survive, at least in their original form. However, the companies that did survive this savage market manipulation will soon leave the DTC and join the new clearing house of the NASDAQ OMX. I know of one CEO that spent over 750K of his own money to save his shell OTC company from this type of manipulation and will most likely have a very healthy profit for his troubles.
When this transpires in March, ALL OF THOSE AIR SHARES MUST BE COVERED by the brokers or market makers AND all those hedge fund short sells MUST BE COVERED AS WELL.???