Apr. 20, 2022
Greetings, As an individual retail investor with a significant portion of my personal wealth invested in the stock market, I am very concerned about this new rule. Abusive short selling practices (including "naked" short selling, i.e. the creation of what are essentially counterfeit shares) have been wreaked destruction on numerous companies (and their investors) to the benefit of only a select few hedge funds and like entities. In my understanding, rather than curtailing abusive short selling practices, this measure further reduces risk carried by those short sellers--creating an entire new clearing service to do so--and thereby increases the likelihood that they will continue and in greater force. This is an absolutely anti-investor rule and must be struck down. The issue of short-seller risk to the market needs to be addressed--but in a way that safeguards the investors, not the hedge funds taking on these staggering risks at the American taxpayers' expense. This is a truly abhorrent rule change for the SEC to consider. If you want to address the extreme risks and potential for economic destruction involved in short selling, why not better regulate or even curtail short selling (at the very least naked short selling), rather than incentivizing it by reducing hedge funds' risk? Respectfully, G. Lewis