Mar. 26, 2022
My name is Sam M, I am a Retail Investor and below is my comment for File No: S7-08-22 (A copy of the comment is also attached as a .txt file): I am a concerned Retail Investor that would love to see improvements to short sale reporting. I will attempt to answer some of the questions that were asked in proposed rule S7-08-22. pg48. Q6: I strongly believe that all different securities and ETFs should be required to report all short sale data. The more information that is available to every investor and the Commission the better. Every short of a security/ETF creates an additional version of itself; the owned lent security/ETF + the now sold short security. This dilutes floats and, therefore, value for investors. This is why I urge the SEC to require as much data as reasonably possible from reporting Managers, regardless of the security type. pg48-49. Q7: All Points: Any and all Short positions resulting from derivatives should be included in whether they meet a Reporting Threshold. Transparency is one of the most important steps towards fairer markets in my opinion. Due to the complexity of derivatives I believe it is entirely possible a way to avoid triggering the Reporting Thresholds exists or could exist. To avoid this from becoming a future issue it would be best to include all derivatives. pg49. Q8: A Manager should also be required to report its end of month gross short position in derivatives. I will avoid repeating the points I made answering Q7 but they apply here too. I believe Managers that meet the Reporting Threshold should have to report Daily (even Hourly/automated if possible) instead of monthly. Transparent data could be avoided by positions being increased/decreased within a reporting period. The end result would be a reported short position that does not reflect the positions held through the month. With High Frequency Trading being common place I am concerned that before reporting, positions could be changed, then after reporting positions could be returned to what they were. To combat this and other potential manipulation of this rule Reporting Threshold checks and the reports themselves should take place as frequently as possible. pg49/50. Q9: Some of the last paragraph covered my opinions on this question. ETF creations and redemptions should be included under Proposed Rule 13f-2. XRT having 324.47% short interest shows the urgent requirement for this rule. Other activity that I believe should be reported includes swaps. Swaps are difficult to track and impossible for retail to know accurately. They can function as short positions and therefore should be included in my opinion. pg50. Q10: Managers meeting a Reporting Threshold should be required to consider short positions that an ETF holds in individual underlying equity securities that are part of the ETF basket in determining whether the Manager meets a Reporting Threshold for such underlying equity securities that are part of the ETF basket. I believe this is required as transparency and simplicity are needed to create fairer markets. Should these short positions not be considered it would be possible for a web of shorting to create issues. If underlying equity in shorted and then the ETF is shorted on top of that margin calculation, covering and original ownership will become impossibly complex. I believe it is in the best interest of the SEC to use all applicable data for Reporting Threshold calculations. pg50. Q11: Monthly reporting by Managers is not frequent enough. Also 14 days is far too long to allow for reporting, by then the next calendar month is already near half complete. Should an entity decide to short a derivative, ETF or security enough to trigger the Reporting Threshold then they should be held responsible for tracking all of their activity involving that derivative, ETF or security from that point. This should be data collected throughout each day of trading and ideally released hourly/real time (at worst daily after market close but before the next trading day begins). We live in a digital age where all of these trades can be tracked digitally without the need for much human input. I do not believe there is any excuse for reporting with such a delay and in such long intervals. pg54. Q14: It would be strongly against retails best interests to have the reports published at the managers level. This would make finding and understanding the scope of shorting very difficult. I believe it is best to have the report aggregated with other reporting Managers reports. Ease of access to this information is critical in creating fairer markets. Pg65. No Q: Market Makers should NOT be except from reporting for any reason. Market Makers should report short sales the same as everyone else should they pass the Reporting Threshold. The following is relevant to some further questions but not any specifically: -The costs to broker-dealers that this rule will incur, even if its reporting was more frequent, are insignificant to the entities that would be required to report. Billions of dollars are made by these entities and should they desire to short a Security, Derivative or ETF beyond the Reporting Threshold it is their responsibility to accurately report this data. -Within the report the Economic Analysis discusses several existing sources of short selling data and the limitations of each. I believe that this should be evidence alone as to the need for this new rule. Bringing this data together in one location controlled by the SEC would benefit everyone that wishes to partake lawfully in all trading. -I cannot stress the importance of Options, Derivatives, especially swaps being included within this rule enough. This rule gives me hope that the system is being made fairer and that the SEC is working to fix the systemic issues that have infected the market. Thank you for taking the time to read my comments and thank you for your work!