I keep talking about shorting and acquisition?
No like many others I mention
shorting. Very occasionally do I mention accumulation as a related strategy. You don't seem to understand that these are different elements. Plus you seem to want to hold me to account for what is widely discussed in HC.
Why limit your question to me? Plenty of others have contributed on this issue. For some reason you want to zero on on me.
This happens time and again in here that I get questions which should be addressed widely, addressed to me only. Please back off.
The precise details of the MO of a strategy using shorting and acquisitions will be able to be described most successfully by those who are actually doing it. Why not ask them? Just because they might be shy on that issue doesn't mean it's not happening.
A few key points which should raise alarm bells to anyone who is rational about the difference between appearance and reality in the market:
- There are no guarantees as to the accuracy of shorting statistics given by the regulator. When you have what amounts to a voluntary program of notification you can't rely on the relevant statistics.
- There is naked short selling. It's illegal but it certainly happens in a largely unregulated market. And it is largely unregulated particularly if there is a culture of noncompliance and if the regulator isn't extremely active and highly interventionist.
- There is churning of retail investors, glad you noticed it. Indeed have often mentioned that MSB trades on low volumes. This remains the case but there are spikes such as just after the Nadaq listing. Overall the low volumes make it very easy to manipulate the SP, something which is always derided by those who claim (rather absurdly IMO) that the market is transparent.
- There are arm's length entities which can easily circumvent the 5% notification rules. Ask madamswer to explain it, he's admired it as a strategy in the past as the accumulation as part of a shorting strategy but maybe he will disown it.
- Comsec doesn't hold the entire field. There is ChiX. There is Nasdaq.
- MSB has been consistently listed as one of the most shorted stocks on the ASX.
- To make any kind of detailed observation you need powers to investigate and show exactly how and why the appearance doesn't match the reality and which areas are being breached and how. ASIC has limited resources. To pretend that operators in the market aren't alive to regulatory gaps is absurd.
Lastly and this is anecdotal: why do so many hang around MSB just to talk it down? I mean if they really believe it's a dud stock make the assessment and move along. But they hang around, many for years and persistently talk it down, to no apparent end. That doesn't make sense and it does raise questions about transparency in a broader sense.
Another poster has posted an illuminating article about naked short selling. Ask for it to be reposted.
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