No, there's no central regulatory body akin to our Federal Reserve Board, this is one major inferior facet to this country, that securities regs are a provincial matter, there is no federally coordinated agency like your SEC [which is what you meant, right? not the FRB] ... so we have ten 'securities commissions', or maybe thirteen now with the territories, i dunno, it's too much to keep up on -g-
It is my general impression that margin requirements from the houses are tighter now than those of the securities commissions, so those of the SCs are purely hypothetical ... things have changed a lot in the last few years, there was a time when people knew each other better and the fine print in the regs was closely observed only at broker year-end in the spring when it got audited .... basically the rule was 50% on equities over five loonies [but you could get margin on pennies if you knew them], 30% if they were optionable, then if they went a little south on you so what, nobody was watching [of course they had paper up the ying-yang on you, well-secured] ... one time in the 80s i was offered cash out of one account exceeding my net equity in it, to swing a deal outside of stocks, the quid pro quo was that my broker buddy could continue to churn the account to his heart's content as long as he netted a profit [!] ... this turned out not to be necessary, but it was right there, cheque in five minutes, no problem ... but that's all changed now, that guy has passed away, there's so many new people in the market, the houses have reorganised and consolidated to the point the old names have faded in memory, everything is by the book now ... i don't trust them any more than they trust me.
I've never shorted a stock, never so much as bought a put, so i'm not the one to ask about that .... twice in the years since coming to SI i came close to shorting, once was in the Big Dog cygs promotion when he had it pumped up above 3.00US through nothing but vacuous spam, but when i made the call the guy i knew at the house was on holiday or something, the juvenile doofus in charge didn't know me and wouldn't put the trade through without 'verification', by the time he got that hours later the most i could have got a short off at was under 2.00US and i wasn't so interested ... also turning me off were the terms - 250% ... the proceeds of the short sale being 100%, they wanted 150% more in account equity ... so to short the value of 10kUS$ i needed to use 15kUS$ of the account ... i understand that with that house shorting otc-bb is no longer permitted, and i'm not interested anyway, fell out of love with them years ago.
Just cranking this off en route to a Christmas party ... yes i'll find some links but i don't know when, gay social whirl doncha know ... i highly doubt that you can open up a Canadian brokerage account and short a $3.00 stock without horrendous margin requirements, and honest, i don't know why you'd want to -g- ... cheers |
