Oh dear : FSA bans short-selling

[BigTime]

Naked shorting will be banned everywhere soon enough so you'll get your wish there. Stock lending is a genuine business used by all fund managers. http://www.isla.co.uk/associate_members.asp

In my opinion all companies should be regulated in a manner that allows them to go bust and the only assistance from the taxpayer should be stat redundancy and jobseekers allowance.

I may be on the bench soon and will run out of money eventually causing my ltd to be shut. At that time I'll admit I shouldn't have drained the company of cash with my excessive spending. Should I be sent to jail?

Anyone here supporting Global One or the like? Will you be starting your Xmas break early?

[lilelvis2000]

Wow! someone must have turned on the lights at the FSA!

Was watching Channel 5 this morning (The Wright Stuff???) apparently there is some man in the UK who only shorts stocks and he made an amazing £900M doing that!....its his kinda trader that needs to be stopped.

Nothing wrong with HBOS apparently - just some greedy manipulative traders.

And NOW Gordo comes on TV and says we gotta clean this all up. hah! What's he been doing for the past 10 years! zip, nada, zilch.

About sums up his career.

[AtW]

In my opinion all companies should be regulated in a manner that allows them to go bust and the only assistance from the taxpayer should be stat redundancy and jobseekers allowance.

Problem is - those guys get huge leverages, this should be illegal - some ponsy nobody would have 10-20 times more liabilities than they have capital, this should not be allowed. Maybe 1.5-2 times max but that's it - it is the huge leverages that were making them lots of money but now they are getting hit with huge losses and run to get bailed out by taxpayer.

Also any job of high responsibility that comes with high pay (in case of success) should have the opposite side of the coin - long jail time in case of failure. If you don't like it - don't take the job, I am sure there will be plenty of people who'd love to get the kind of salaries those guys get.

[AtW]

I may be on the bench soon and will run out of money eventually causing my ltd to be shut. At that time I'll admit I shouldn't have drained the company of cash with my excessive spending. Should I be sent to jail?

Whether you should go to jail depends on whether you just fooked over yourself as sole shareholder or lots of other people who trusted you - if that number is high and say damage is measured in many millions (and certainly billions) then yes, you should go to jail. These tough rules don't need to be applied to everyone but maybe top 1000 jobs where a fook up would have dire consequences to millions of people. This should apply to politicians too - applying my logic would mean Brown would have been in jail long time ago.

[BigTime]

Problem is - those guys get huge leverages, this should be illegal - some ponsy nobody would have 10-20 times more liabilities than they have capital, this should not be allowed. Maybe 1.5-2 times max but that's it - it is the huge leverages that were making them lots of money but now they are getting hit with huge losses and run to get bailed out by taxpayer.

Also any job of high responsibility that comes with high pay (in case of success) should have the opposite side of the coin - long jail time in case of failure. If you don't like it - don't take the job, I am sure there will be plenty of people who'd love to get the kind of salaries those guys get.

I bought my flat without a deposit so an infinite amount of leverage there but the building society thought it worth the risk. If I'd never paid it back it would have been between me the bs and the courts. The same thing should happen here with no need for taxpayer money or jail.

[AtW]

I bought my flat without a deposit so an infinite amount of leverage there but the building society thought it worth the risk.

And if such sales were not allowed by law there would not be house price bubble - don't think it is good example of leverage in any case. Real leverage is what you get from spread betting.

[BigTime]

And if such sales were not allowed by law there would not be house price bubble - don't think it is good example of leverage in any case. Real leverage is what you get from spread betting.

You should open an account and give it a try. You might enjoy it and even make some cash.

[AtW]

You should open an account and give it a try. You might enjoy it and even make some cash.

I am not interested in gambling - if I was I'd rather go to betfair or casino as chances of winning there are much better than on stock market. Plus I like to keep my hands clean

[Stan.goodvibes]

Maybe not such a good idea

Hmmmm,

I was all for the idea of banning short-selling but this guy does have a point...

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/alex_si...ehman_brothers

Now I am not so sure. But at least we can all watch this 'experiment' over the next few weeks and months and see if it helps or hinders. Now that some of the irresponsibility of the banks over the last few years is coming to light it might be a step backwards to remove potential whistle-blowers from the finance sector, when right now accountability and transparency are paramount for confidence to return to the markets.

[TykeMerc]

As I said earlier shorting nothing short of a cynical attack on a company, if rumours can be spread a lot of ordinary investors (including OUR pension funds) get wiped out so that a couple of guys in the city can run off with multiple millions. Killing off HBOS is likely to mean 5-10 thousand people in my town losing their jobs which will kill off numerous businesses in West Yorkshire and possibly destroy the Halifax local economy. This market manipulation will damage if not ruin god knows how many thousands of families.

All of these market manipulating attacks and companies should have been made internationally illegal years ago as it's nothing short of institutionalised theft on a massive scale.

I'm not fighting AtW's corner here, I just think that shorting is completely immoral. The bastards involved should have all of their assets stripped, be publically whipped and electro shocked daily for 50 years and their families should be sold for organ transplants.