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Technology Stocks : INTERNET ASIA + Indexes -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: OLD JAKE JUSTUS who wrote (1372)	10/18/1999 11:05:00 AM
From: micky	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1567

Started reading here cause of interest in Asian companies, but your crusade for shorting controls caught my eye... IMO, the key problem is MMs - US or Canadian - who can "naked short" indefinitely. They manipulate prices in concert with one another to help each other cover... or hope for the day when a stock is halted and they have pure profit. The problems of day trading, short selling (ala A@P), pump and dump and insider selling are microscopic in comparison to the legal shorting by MMs. Even companies with track records and a reasonable investor base are unable to fight this archaic NASD system. The question is, as long as MMs are allowed to go short for indefinite periods, do price manipulations with cronies to assure they can cover, and do crosses to keep their inventories intact, nothing will change no matter what rules brokers make individual accounts play by. Until a straight buy-sell market (where shares must be on-hand in order to sell them, and money - or real credit - must be on hand to buy them) exists for BB type securities, the problem won't be solved. NASD's system is the biggest problem - they will not change it since they - the MMs - are the ones benefiting from it. So what is the alternative? Telling lawmakers to "fix it" doesn't help unless an alternative exists... And small companies do need a market for their securities no matter how shaky the company... for there are many investors who are willing to invest in such "development" stage companies, and are willing to take the risk. However, the risk should be in the quality of the company (the subject of due diligence and vigilance against fraud), not the games the MMs will play with the stock once it starts trading. Anyhow, the question is, what's the alternative? Good investing.