Apr. 20, 2022
As a retail investor I am disgusted and appalled that this rule is even being proposed in the first place. The very fact that Wall St institutions (banks, hedge funds etc) have created rules that permit things like Failure To Deliver and Naked Shorts is criminal to begin with. The only thing that the adoption of this rule will accomplish is to further enable these criminals to conduct their criminal activities with impunity and even less oversight than they currently face. Consider for a moment the concept of an FTD...someone has PAID you for something, you've taken their money for it and given them nothing in return except an 'Oops, I don't have it after all' (to quote a wise man on the subject "where I come from, they call that stealing"), that is exactly what this is, it is STEALING with a fancy name. The effect this proposed rule would have would be catastrophic, allowing participants to take on infinite risk with little to no accountability or transparency. FTDs are al0ready abused through a variety of methods such as using deriviatives not allowing them to reach their 30 day mark where the security needs to be delivered. The introduction of this rule would only exacerbate this issue using the SFT to simply temporarily borrow the shares needed to satisfy the FTD and kick the can down the road once again. Instead of rules that allow thee bad actors to further shirk their obligations and cheat the system, why not focus on making these illegal activites (such as Naked Shorting) impossible in the first place? And until that happens, the SEC should be prosecuting these abusers with meaningful retribution, not slaps on the wrists and 'cost of doing business' fines, I'm talking loss of license to trade for 30 days. Do it again? Its 60 days, 90 days, then permanently banned from market trading. You need to start taking these issues seriously, you're supposed to be protecting the retail investor and ensuring our markets are free and fair for all, not enabling this crime syndicate to further fleece investors. You don't fix a broken system by allowing the bad actors to break it even further for their profits. ENOUGH! This needs to stop. Scott Mac