Fleish, I agree that in principle shorting can act to promote...

Fleish, I agree that in principle shorting can act to promote market efficiency but at present there is a million mile gap between the holistic principle and the daily practice

Firstly there should be transparency ... which we don't have... investors have a right to know who lent the shares, who did the shorting and most importantly the daily net short position announced within 1 day and not the current joke of 5 days...

secondly the purpose of shorting in principle should be to detect small pricing inefficiencies and not to drive companies to the brink of financial difficulty... in this context a limit on the percentage shorted or a limit the rate of shorting should exist

third the general principle of shorting needs a large market in order to be efficient ... in small markets one or two players can seriously distort share pricing... sadly the best example of this is PNV... a few years ago DW made Phil look a fool... in response Phil spent 2 years and a lot of other people's money to make pnv the fifth most shorted company on the asx

fourthly asic needs to get real about policing the companies engaged in this practice and in particular look at how they use media outlets and analysts to create false flags ... flags from which they have set themselves up to profit