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Gold/Mining/Energy : Donner Minerals (DML.V) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cal Coish who wrote (6751)	8/16/1998 11:11:00 AM
From: Jimsy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11676

Cal and the Chief - shorting. The permitted practice I especially detest, and which has probably played a great part is the sad state of the VSE is the shorting practices permitted by financial institutions. This is what appears to typically go on: - company xyz needs a financing - financial institution abc agrees to raise some money, sign deal with xyz to peddle stock, and also gets themselves a bunch of options at current trading price or lower - company xyz starts the promotion of their intent - institution abc want to get as much for the stock they peddle as possible, so they enter the hype campaign as well - xyz company continues with the hype, maybe even gets drill crew out to site, might even find an intersection (usually of little economic significance) - by this time the stock has doubled or tripled - institution abc sell the stock they agreed to peddle into this over-hyped market, and since they most likely know that what company xyz has going for them is worthless, they now short the stock, which can be covered by the cheap options they arranged back at the beginning of this cycle - insiders who were once long also sell out and short - stock gets hammered back to less then where it started - with this practice the companies, insiders, and financial institutions can really fleece the public The VSE has dropped from about 1400 to 450, I believe this could be the worst performance of any market exchange in the world including all of Asia. With the current volume and performance of the VSE, unless something picks up soon, I would expect there are some financial problems looming. Perhaps there has been enough examples of the above and enough unhappy loosers, that the VSE will never recover. Certainly without some comeback in the price of gold and metals in general, the VSE isn't likely to move up from the 450. Rather it will likely go lower, as many of the juniors have no money, can't raise money, may try to consolidate and raise money, which just makes the index worse.

To: Cal Coish who wrote (6751)	8/16/1998 11:22:00 AM
From: stockclub	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11676

Wouldn't a ban on shorting just benefit the BreX style crooks? I fail to see how a short ban would create more balance - why not just ban all selling and let the market rise to infinity regardless of the dim prospects for most of the companies. Short sellers have nothing to do with the current economic conditions or the reputation Canada's junior markets have gotten from scam artists promoting junk. If a company has the goods, its value will be realized by the market, regardless of short or long players' agendas. There is much that could be done to restore investor confidence in the VSE, starting with increased before the fact surveilance (maybe hiring someone like adrian Duplesis to run things) and more than slap on the wrist penalties for offenders. Banning shorting would only serve to fill the crooks pockets even more and see the limited liquidity left now completely disappear.