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Counterfeiting Stock – Explaining illegal naked shorting and stock manipulation

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241–250 of 403 posts

Re: Counterfeiting Stock – Explaining illegal naked shorting and stock manipulation

#241
post #139

This is mostly nonsense. There is nothing wrong with there being more shares short than shares outstanding. It just seems problematic, until you think it through. Person A has 1 share of company Y. Person B borrows 1 share of company Y from person A, and then sells it into the market. This is called a short sale. But person B just sold their borrowed share. Now that share is owned by person C. Person C can now lend i…

> Shorting behaves the same way that fractional reserve banking does Yes. Except that the fractional reserve banking system has a lender of last resort.

So does the stock market: a company can always issue more stock. And a market can allow naked short sales to provide liquidity.

Re: Counterfeiting Stock – Explaining illegal naked shorting and stock manipulation

#242
post #139

This is mostly nonsense. There is nothing wrong with there being more shares short than shares outstanding. It just seems problematic, until you think it through. Person A has 1 share of company Y. Person B borrows 1 share of company Y from person A, and then sells it into the market. This is called a short sale. But person B just sold their borrowed share. Now that share is owned by person C. Person C can now lend i…

>Person A has 1 share of company Y. Person B borrows 1 share of company Y from person A, and then sells it into the market. This is called a short sale. But person B just sold their borrowed share. Now that share is owned by person C. What happens to Person A in this scenario?

They get interest from Person B, and when the short contract is up, they can force Person B (or more accurately their broker who passes the price on) to buy a replacement stock, regardless of the price. Alternatively, they can attempt to open another short contract, paying more interest to have continue to borrow the stock. Sooner or later, however, person B is legally and contractually required to to return an identical share to person A.

Re: Counterfeiting Stock – Explaining illegal naked shorting and stock manipulation

#243

Wow, it seems like none of the top commenters here have put in at least minimal effort to read and understand this. The author does not complain about short sellers per se or about the fact that more than 100% of a stock's float can be shorted. That is all nice and fine. Instead what the author does complain about is that fact that the (supposedly regulated) mechanisms for shorting a stock are fraught with loopholes…

[deleted]

Re: Counterfeiting Stock – Explaining illegal naked shorting and stock manipulation

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't selling something you don't own a fraud or the stock market has an exemption? The instance when A essentially sells the share to B accepting the right to receive the share back as a payment also wouldn't fly in any other environment, as this could just open the door to money laundering. So why is this accepted in the stock market? Or simply the law enforcement doesn't know how to tackle it?

> Isn't selling something you don't own a fraud or the stock market has an exemption? I call up Dominos and order a pepperoni pizza. They take my order and process my credit card. They’ve just sold me a pizza that doesn’t exist. Is this fraud?

Well that's wrong analogy. The right analogy would be if you borrowed a pizza from your mate and sold it to someone.

Re: Counterfeiting Stock – Explaining illegal naked shorting and stock manipulation

#245
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't selling something you don't own a fraud or the stock market has an exemption? The instance when A essentially sells the share to B accepting the right to receive the share back as a payment also wouldn't fly in any other environment, as this could just open the door to money laundering. So why is this accepted in the stock market? Or simply the law enforcement doesn't know how to tackle it?

Fraud requires intent to deceive. Where's the intent to deceive in short selling?

Selling something you don't own.

Re: Counterfeiting Stock – Explaining illegal naked shorting and stock manipulation

#246
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fraud requires intent to deceive. Where's the intent to deceive in short selling?

Selling something you don't own.

Is a future contract fraudulent then?

If I sell you an August-settled coffee future, that's a promise to deliver you coffee in August. Is it fraudulent if I don't have the coffee right now? After all, I've sold you something I don't own.

Of course it isn't. What matters is that the contract is fulfilled, and for equity sales in the US, the contract states that a share will be delivered to the buyer 2 days after the transaction.

Re: Counterfeiting Stock – Explaining illegal naked shorting and stock manipulation

#247
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is mostly nonsense. Agreed. People should be able to take the pessimistic side of a trade. The one problem I could see with short selling is not the technical act of selling short, but the (dis)information campaign around a company that appears to follow. But, this happens both ways good and bad so it's probably a wash. > Most of Wall Street hates short sellers, because they drive down the prices of companies…

> But, this happens both ways good and bad so it's probably a wash. Only if you ignore reality. Huge hedge funds are called market movers for a reason. These hedge funds decide to short your company's stock and they have a direct impact on your stock value regardless of whether the hedge fund has any basis for actually shorting. Their "reason" can be 100% bullshit. Doesn't matter. They put a large short position on y…

There's a fallacy in your claims. Shorting affects the owners of the stock. But publicly traded companies don't normally own a large amount of their own stock. Their stock price doesn't have that direct an effect on their balance sheets. It affects their credit worthiness, but not in a mechanistic way. (Believe me, Gamestop isn't finding it easier to borrow just because its price has gone bonkers.)

Re: Counterfeiting Stock – Explaining illegal naked shorting and stock manipulation

#248
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does your broker automatically loan out your shares? The “loopholes” are intentional carve outs for market makers [1]. Something you want unless you like market makers disconnecting every time the market hiccups. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/242.203

“Market makers” shouldn’t get to mess around with shares they don’t have. This whole idea of privileged traders, T+X settlement, etc is just crazy to someone who’s been used to trading crypto.

The same concept exists in crypto. It’s called flash loans. Ethereum smart contracts can absolutely sell tokens that they don’t own, as long as they buy them back before the end of the transaction. Like traditional market making, this is used to arb price differences in the Defi ecosystem and improve liquidity.

Re: Counterfeiting Stock – Explaining illegal naked shorting and stock manipulation

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't selling something you don't own a fraud or the stock market has an exemption? The instance when A essentially sells the share to B accepting the right to receive the share back as a payment also wouldn't fly in any other environment, as this could just open the door to money laundering. So why is this accepted in the stock market? Or simply the law enforcement doesn't know how to tackle it?

People sell things they don’t own all the time line their house or car. When you borrow a share and sell it, you’re really renting it to find one much like someone rented it to you. It’s like subletting an apartment you’re renting from a landlord. In the end there’s a chain and if the person who lent you the share wants it back then the person you loaned it to will need to produce it for you, etc. This is why we have…

I don't think this is the same. If you sell a house that is mortgaged you essentially pay off the mortage and therefore gain ownership and then transfer that ownership onto the buyer. The example with subletting is also wrong - the fitting analogy would be if you rented a flat and then sold it to someone.

Re: Counterfeiting Stock – Explaining illegal naked shorting and stock manipulation

#250
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The price of anything is a result of its some intrinsic value and the volume of supply. No. The price of a stock is the value of its discounted cash flows. Shorting creates synthetic shares, that guarantee the new longs an exactly replicated stream of cash flows. This doesn’t make the original shares any less valuable, because they still have the same cash flows. Imagine someone conjured a new company, called Tesla…

You cannot reduce ownership of a stock to discounted cash flow. Owning shares (mostly) comes with shareholder rights like voting. To me it is pretty obvious selling more of those rights than exist is fraudulent.

Google did this exact experiment with GOOG and GOOGL. Voting is worth about 1-5% of the stock price.

And you don't get extra voting rights for shorting (borrowing) a share.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/shortsalevotingr...

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