Save Canadian Mining…Restore the uptick requirement If someone wanted to destroy the Canadian junior mining industry, that person couldn’t do a better job than is currently being done by banks, brokers, traders and regulatory agencies. Permitting stocks to be shorted on downticks (as a stock is moving down in price) is outrageous. It artificially creates an image of weakness causing legitimate shareholder concern often leading to selling by “spooked” genuine shareholders. It is not disgruntled shareholders who are selling and certainly have the right to sell their shares, but it is traders who are borrowing the shares of the true shareholders to sell to create weakness in the stock. We also question whether many of the short sellers actually do borrow the shares properly in compliance with the rules. We are not questioning traders’ rights to short stocks which is standard and an integral part of stock markets functioning smoothly. Shorting is for the most part essential for market makers (specialists) to effectively function. The fact is that market makers(specialists) simply do not have and cannot hold adequate “inventory” positions in stocks and must short to fill buy orders and keep balanced markets. And keep in mind until recent years , they never were permitted to short on downticks, Today, restoring the uptick rule for short selling is crucial to the survival of the “junior” Canadian mining industry.  We also believe that all Canadian and American stock markets should again prohibit shorting on down-ticks. We are going to report on this very questionable […]