NEWS

Washington, February 24 — Reuters correspondent Rachelle Younglai reports (SEC reins in short sellers with new restrictions”) that the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a new rule to restrict short selling more than a year after the financial crisis provoked cries to rein in investors who bet on a stock’s decline.
“The Securities and Exchange Commission [...]

SEC Commissioner Troy A. Paredes, in outlining his vote opposing an SEC rule to curb short selling transactions, questioned whether the restraints will bolster investor confidence.
“First, the essential rationale behind the rule is that the short sale restriction, if implemented, will bolster investor confidence. This claim is rooted in conjecture and is too speculative to [...]

In voting against a new rule to limit short selling transactions, SEC Commissioner Kathleen L. Casey questioned the regulator’s implementation of a rule that lacks empirical evidence.
“The release before the Commission today answers this threshold question…in the negative. The release states clearly that there was no evidence that the repeal of the uptick rule [...]

The Financial Times reports (February 9) on a new study that shows that rules requiring short sellers to disclose publicly their positions harms investors’ interests by undermining market quality. The report by the consultancy Oliver Wyman, and commissioned by the Managed Funds Association, found that short-selling disclosure rules “have materially negative impacts on [...]

University of North Carolina researchers at Chapel Hill find that “short sellers’ advantage arises from their ability to process publicly available information.”
The researchers related a database of short selling transactions to another of news releases to reach their findings.
“We show that the most profitable short sales are not from market makers, but [...]

Reuters reports on February 1 that Germany’s financial watchdog (Bafin) dropped a partial ban on the short-selling of financial stocks. “The situation on financial markets has improved so much over the last months that a further extension of the emergency measure, which Bafin enacted at the height of the crisis, was no longer [...]