Yes, Banning short selling will not be the signal of a bottom. After shorts are forced to cover, watch the market for these financials. Without shorts bidding to cover, these stocks can just dribble down day after day -- Chinese water torture for the longs of these stocks.
Nitro, as the market sinks, the SEC's stupidity grows. The entire first page and a half of the Orders could have been summed up "in an effort to prevent price discovery because we don't like the prices being discovered....." Every options MM I know was beyond confused. Today, I heard a bunch of firms rebelled and refused to make markets at all. Don't know the legality of any of it, because I'm not a lawyer. However, it seems that the SEC couldn't hold them in breach because it breached the MM contract first by repealing their exemption. Contract law can be pretty specific. But who has time for picayune details like the Law when you're furiously pounding out an order at 3 am to burn down the house and everyone in it to save your own skin? My understanding is that options market maker restrictions are now lifted on everything but Reg Sho stocks (also dumb). Did I hear correctly? And...good luck wading through this giant bucket of shit the SEC has plopped us all into.
If the market-fakers are given hedging exemption to short, reversals that were pricing Friday at $2 or more everywhere in that list of 797 will be a multi-gazillion dollar windfall to the market-fakers. The exemption should be granted to ANYONE that is hedging DIRECTLY correlated derivatives - more specifically listed options and SSFs. If not, the reversals will continue to price at retarded levels making it economic suicide using any of these products to hedge a long delta.
You don't think they'll have this cleaned up again? I'm shocked. Watch this for as long as you can stomach it. http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1222022373.php It gets worse. Watch Europe. Theirs go to Jan 16. How can we allow it, and they not? That would allow all the shorts to come here and bomb UBS, RBS, you can come up with the names. Nope. Has to be in tandem. The Western nations are working together, for a change, so look for it to continue. Everybody is plenty scared.