Has anyone who trades through assent actually used this product? Are they up and running? How does it work? When are they available firmwide? Anyone who may know more especially principles and upper management please respond. Thanks
They are being tested in one NYC office today. If all goes well, they should be available to everyone on monday.
In my opinion, the uptick rule only exists nowdays for manipulation and abuses of MMs and specialists, as well some of the smart money players which can easily go around it. I'm sure large retail clients do not like having their 20k short order wait when there is a buyer 5 cents below. Sometimes a buyer and a short seller get deadlocked in a penny range. Not efficient, not liquid and simply stupid. I do thhink that the bullet use of short scalpers got completely out of control. But the real idea of these tools was to get short when you want to get short and not wait as your order sits and waits for an uptick while the price drops. I think it is laughable that the Russian stockmarket functioned with great success without specialists or MMs or an idiotic uptick rule even in its fragile state, yet we have one of the oldest exchanges that still uses inferior trading practices in the country with the most advanced financial and trading technology. It is a scam, plain and simple. If some piece of crap low volume NYSE stock gets hammered by a bear raider, well tough shit. There is always an opportunity for a big player to come in and buy the stock up when the price gets low and rip the short. If the price keeps dropping, eventually it will become a bargain above all bargains so why would not someone come in and buy even for true investment reasons. Thats how it's done in other markets. Thats why they are more volatile and more liquid. This is all common sense, so the only reason SEC still enforces the uptick rule is to protect profits of its friends that cannot trade NYSE & Naz like real markets.
I'm a bit curious too...my "spies" tell me that this product has the extra cost/risk of market movement between the price you attempt to trade with the "3rd party" and the price they sell the stock....and that you can only use them once during the day. I'm sure that any decent trader would not fall for that...right? Imagine a 3 cent slippage of 2,000 shares just to try to get short...good for the Firm(s) and the "3rd party", horrible for the trader. But if they have figured a way around that silliness, then I guess we'll all know Monday. Please continue the PM's with details...I really think that there has been an error of some sort in the understanding of the whole thing.. Don
Exactly what I kept saying in previous threads when bullets were eliminated. Granted, I still believe in the specialist system (although they must enforce existing rules), but the uptick rule is stupid! If someone is "bear raiding" then there must be some valuation reason to do so. Otherwise, the person/institution selling the stock short is taking a huge risk, and it creates opportunities for astute investors!
Could you just imagine the reverse.... "Sorry Mr. Jones but you can't buy that stock on an uptick you have to wait for it to trade lower in order to buy." The public and the government would have complaints up the wahzoo if that were the case. But the same people state "Selling a stock short...oh my gosh that's unamerican! You SOB's need to be punished! The rule served its purpose when it was needed, but times change and the rules need to change as well. The NYSE just once again proves that they indeed have very long arms in Washington. After all what happened to the 300 "test" stocks that were supposed to migrate to the bid test rule? "Well we will just have to study the matter further before we implement such radical change".....come on give me a break and just let the traders trade no matter what the direction of the market. The trend is your friend no matter if its up or down.