shorts are good or bad, page-18

"There is now a pocket of air below prices and no one will have any reason to buy if confidence takes a big hit. This is very bad."

Please explain to me how permitting short sales will improve this situation? If short sales are permitted and confidence takes a big hit, there will be a mass of people selling, and no one buying, and the price will drop.

Encouraging even more selling (through shorting) when confidence drops is very bad, because it makes a bad situation even worse. Therefore it is a good thing that shorting is banned. It should be banned permanently in my view.

I can see how shorting (with uptick rule) on an INDEX could add to the functioning of a market and permit hedging of positions etc, but I have never yet seen a single argument that convinces me of the benefit of permitting shorts on individual stocks.