my complaint to asic lodged by fax today, page-59

The stock market is like a boxing ring without weight divisions. So if I chose to enter that ring I accept there are blokes bigger and stronger than me and that's their natural advantage, and that's my risks.

Like other posters I hate seeing manipulation. I hate those sell orders that sells 2 or 5 shares etc, and those that buy say 100000 shares and sells 100002 shares at the close etc just to get the price to close a little lower. I honestly hate them with a passion. But I don't think ASIC can ban those practices. What would ASIC do? Divide the market into 'weight divisions'? What if ASIC asks you to get a brokers license and be able to trade like a broker?

I think what needs to be done is more in the area of policing naked short sell. I don't have a problem with those who properly borrowed before short selling because there's a limited supply of stocks to be borrowed. What ASIC needs to do is to police and enforce that brokers aren't allowed to loan their clients' shares to others for shorting. ASIC also need to ensure that a sell order can only be placed by someone who owns the shares or have borrowed the shares. The last area, and IMHO the worst, is CFD. CFD is being hailed has some sort of ingenious financial invention. But CFD can be used to get around short sell ban even if the ASX issues a full short sell ban. While the number of shares in a company are limited, CFDs are unlimited so your CFD provider have endless supply of CFDs to SELL, SELL, SELL. And if they choose they can use it to manipulate the underlying security just like how gold futures can be used to manipulate physical gold. So if you hate short selling practices and you hate manipulation you really should ask ASIC and ASX to do the following:

1. Ban all CFDs,
2. Ban all naked short sells,
3. ASX should build some mechanism to ensure every sell order that are placed are placed by those who either own the shares or have properly borrowed the shares,
4. ASX should act as the exchange for the share borrowing/lending as well as share trading.
5. Share lending/borrowing must also be properly registered/transferred with the full knowledge of issuer of the shares.

If they do the above I personally feel that a level playing field is achieved. However, would they do it? Without going into the reduced revenues for ASX (and probably ASIC too) ... I guess the answer lies in: who will pay for the above work? The big boys aren't interested in a level playing field. If us retail holders could afford to pay for it we could probably retire. Sad reality, whether we choose to accept it or not.

Anyway, I'd probably try and send my request to ASIC with the above 5 points and see if we get any luck. At least I know in other markets (e.g. HKex) short sell orders are clearly marked as short sell orders when placed.