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’Zwei linke Füße
That’s two left feet, for non-Germanophone readers.
In what’s probably an effort to justify German’s short selling ban, Chancellor Angela Merkel has been getting all apocalyptic about the euro on Wednesday morning.
Die Leerverkäufer sind kaputt (updated)
As of midnight on Tuesday, the German breed of short-seller (Leerverkäufer) is set to become a rare species, according to Dow Jones:
Germany will ban so-called naked short-selling from midnight, a lawmaker with the ruling Christian Democratic Union told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday.
SEC cracks down on ‘illicit’ short selling
This is a first:
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged two Boca Raton, Fla., residents for engaging in illegal short selling of securities in advance of participating in numerous secondary offerings to make illicit profits.
US lawmakers free to continue their short selling, speculative ways
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that “some members of Congress made risky bets with their own money that US stocks or bonds would fall during the financial crisis”.
On Wednesday, the newspaper published a follow-up,
Oh, those naughty short selling…US senators?
Hats off to the Wall Street Journal for delving into the two-facedness of US legislators, at least as far as short selling is concerned.
In a story published on Monday, the Journal reported that “some members of Congress made risky bets with their own money that US stocks or bonds would fall during the financial crisis”.
Is this really going to help?
A press release from the Hellenic Republic Capital Markets Commission:
The Hellenic Capital Market Commission, after taking into account the conditions prevailing in the Greek market has decided today to ban short selling of shares listed in the Athens Exchange.
How to short a volcano
Data Explorers, specialists in the tracking of short interest, on Thursday published a report on how investors sought to profit from the fallout of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.
Here are their ‘observations in market sentiment over six days of closed airspace’,
The men who short-sold the world
Well, not quite. But shorting specialists Data Explorers did come up trumps on Monday with a report which took a global perspective on the last twelve months’ short and long positions.
According to Data Explorers,
Short-selling disclosure: the devil’s in the details
Funny. The Ides of March isn’t until the 15th, but it looks like everyone’s out to get CESR.
The Committee of European Securities Regulators has already drawn fire for its short-selling disclosure proposals,
[Bob and Kevin on AV] On short selling
Once again short selling is under attack, with CDS buyers now facing the same fear of attack as stock sellers experienced in 2008.
Seems to me that free markets are dead. Policy makers had no interest in ‘policing’ markets when credit and equity markets were in their rampant hey day,
Hail CESR, short sellers!
They came. They saw. And they’re out to conquer European short selling.
The headline of a Committee of European Securities Regulators press release, Tuesday afternoon:
CESR recommends the European Institutions introduce a pan-European short selling disclosure regime
In Eurospeak,
Shorts smoked live?
On Rule 201, 204 etc — SEC deputy commissioner Kathleen Casey and others…
My big fat short-selling deterrent
The Athens Stock Exchange is trying to make life more difficult for those evil speculators who roam global markets looking for innocent countries and companies to ruin.
It has increased the stock lending interest rate from 2.5 per cent to 5.5 per cent and adjusted margin requirements — all because of “increased price volatility”.
The scale of sovereign short-selling
The sovereign debt most targeted by short-sellers is not what you might expect, according to DataExplorers.
We’re not entirely sure of the methodology here, but the short-selling specialist has presented this interesting chart.
Short and unstressed
Remember the stress tests for 19 of the US’s biggest banks?
They ended up being pretty much a non-event, with 10 of the 19 financials needing to add money to their coffers — money charitably provided (in part) by the US govt.
Drop your shorts
The FSA surprised many people this week when it announced plans to lift the ban on short selling of UK financials.
However, it seems the City watchdog is still not entirely happy with the practice of shorting,
Coming up short
Interesting Chart of the Day here from Bloomberg. The blue line is a basket of the 32 financial stocks that the FSA banned from short-selling in September. Together they declined 28 per cent since the restriction came into effect.
“Short sellers are not the villains in this drama”
Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates is one smooth short-selling operator, and as the Site that Supports our Shorts, we say this approvingly.
In an interview with Gillian Tett, he argues that politicians – and not short-sellers – ought to take the blame for the ongoing financial drama.
Cox, the SEC and CDS
Score one for Governer Paterson – his request that regulators-on-high step in to sort out the market for credit default swaps certainly has not been ignored.
Here’s what Christopher Cox, SEC Chairman,
You’re on my list
Here’s a big, flashing warning sign to SELL, if ever there was one.
Companies are actively campaigning to be put on the SEC’s list of stocks that can’t be short-sold. From CNBC:
General Electric is expected to be added to a list of financial stocks that can no longer be sold short,