April 14, 2008
Commissioner Cox: I urge you to act promptly and positively on this petition and remove the special enabling provision granted to the previleged few which allows the rampant manipulation of stock prices which is presently ruining investors and companies. Turn back the selling on the downtick rule you changed last July to its previous state.
In view of what is happening in the markets world wide due to practices of HEDGE FUNDS and others that devastate stockholders and companies in one fell swoop, in as little as one trading session and your inability to control and eliminate the ongoing abuse, I am demanding that you eliminate short selling altogether as an immoral and unethical predatory practice which purports to sell stocks when, in fact, it does not own the stocks it offers for sale and too often never does. We, small investors, long ignorant of this practice which plays with the shares we own which we have entrusted to the safekeeping of brokerage houses demand that you do your job.
You will never be able to deliver the "fair, honest and open market" which it is your prime purpose for existence, until shortselling is eliminated en toto from the market place. yours truly, george c. vlahos byfield, ma.
P.S. although it appears that your offices have taken no action to follow up on my hundreds of emails inviting you to look at the dailing realtime trading of the stock of ON2 technology--symbol,. ont, I once again call upon you to take a good look at the last 9 months of manipulation of this stock price as prima facie evidence of the problem we are calling upon you to correct. Today's pattern of trading would be sufficient, in itself, to see the relentless and successful manipulation of this stock price which prevents ordinary investors from engaging in the game being played by one or a closely coordinated team of shortsellers with unlimited access to all the shares they need---because they are either naked or more likely, because they are the same shares being churned back and forth between the left and right hands of the same body. In other words, contrary to what the uninitiated, retail investor concludes from looking at the action, there are not many shares being sold by any real investor, it just looks that way due to the illegal show being produced by some professional trader organization. Only you have the capability to find out who the thieves are and stop their game immediately. That is the only solution short of legislation, which I believe will be necessarry and will be enacted in the next twelve months with the support of investors like me. : file 4-557 NIPC Rule Petition - Customer Account Rule