fallacy of liquidity - cer vs cnp, page-29

Seeing what Bernie Madoff got away with, nothing would surprise me.
I can also see the potential profits in shorting and reducing the SP of a co that is a candidate for needing more capital, attempting to create some sort of a self fulfilling prophecy through making it harder to do a capital raising.
Also the banks may well have a vested interest in this happening.

Apart from the obvious drawbacks that it is illegal. It is still hard to keep this stuff secret. You never know when you'll be hung out to dry, or blackmailed, by a disaffected staff member or whoever.

Also CER is complex, but not really a black box (like a bank or insurance company). I would think there are other better shorts out there.

I need to have a reason for why something is tunnelling, before I'll buy in. I still sincerely believe it is forced selling by funds (some of which have really stupid rules not designed for a 50% market collapse) and overleveraged investors. There are enough forces at work to create this, and CER has a fair story to tell - so there are buyers, and therefore liquidity, and so transactions can occur.

Some stupid rules I have been aware of:
If market cap below $x - must be sold.
If 10% in (say) REIT sector, must rotate out of it down to (say) 3%.
We must be x% cash by x date. (Current super fund policy)
If no dividends - must sell.
If not in x index - must sell.
and then there is the vanilla hafta sell 'cause we have no money.

Enough windbagging from me. The market is nicely tanking again.