This should help : Illegal "naked short selling" involves placing a sales transaction, but not borrowing the stock, and simply failing to deliver it on delivery day. It is also called "failing to deliver" or FTD - or delivery failure.
• Delivery failure is a significant problem nowadays, as it can be used to run stock prices down in a manipulative manner. Delivery failure in any other industry is called fraud. Hedge funds are the biggest culprits in this illegal trading strategy, with broker/dealers right behind them in the culpability queue.
• Hedge funds are now the largest players in the US equities markets, representing the majority of trading, with almost $2 trillion under management.
• Hedge funds are large, virtually unregulated pools of anonymous money, used to invest in any way the operator sees fit.
• Prime brokers allow their hedge fund customers leverage on their assets, meaning that for every dollar of asset, they could easily hold $10 of short positions.
• This over-leverage presents a systemic risk should positions in several larger funds go the wrong way, as there isn't enough collateral to cover the domino effect of multiple positions being forced to cover.
• This over-leverage creates an environment where the brokers are now pregnant with their hedge fund customers' liabilities, and have a vested interest in seeing depressed stock prices remain depressed - if the stocks go up, the hedge funds could easily fail, and the brokers are on the hook to buy-in and deliver the stock owed by the funds - resulting in brokerage failures.
• The DTCC is ultimately at risk for this domino effect, as brokerages fail.
• The DTCC is owned by the brokers, thus is the brokers.
• The DTCC processes over $1.2 quadrillion (million trillion) every year, and owns most of the stock American investors hold in their accounts - but most of the country has never heard of the company. The total GNP of the planet is about $20 trillion per year.
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