Paper: Naked Short Selling: Is it Information-Based Trading?

Paper

Naked Short Selling: Is it Information-Based Trading?

Harrison Liu, Sean T. McGuire, Edward P. Swanson

SSRN Electronic Journal, 21 June 2013

Citing a widely held belief that naked short selling is not based on company fundamentals, the SEC (2008) has substantially tightened Reg. SHO close-out regulations in an effort to eliminate naked short selling. Contrary to accepted belief, we find that accounting fundamentals are highly significant in explaining naked short sales. Further, naked short sales contain incremental information about future stock prices: Abnormal returns from a long/short trading strategy that buys (sells short) shares with low (high) short interest are more than seven times larger using naked and covered short interest, compared to returns using only covered short interest (15.2 percent vs. 2.1 percent annualized). Our findings show that recent actions by regulators to eliminate naked short sales are likely to impede informed arbitrage and reduce market efficiency.

PDF ( 41 pages): Naked Short Selling: Is it Information-Based Trading?

Article: SEC fines optionsXpress, individuals $4.8 million for naked short sales

Article - Media, Publications

SEC fines optionsXpress, individuals $4.8 million for naked short sales

Reuters Staff, 10 June 2013

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A Securities and Exchange Commission judge has ordered optionsXpress, its former chief financial officer and a customer to pay a total of $4.8 million in fines and to return $4.2 million for illegally selling shares they did not hold.

The order was posted late Friday on the SEC’s website.

A lawyer for Charles Schwab Corp, which bought optionsXpress in 2011 after the alleged violations occurred, said that optionsXpress “respectfully disagrees” with the ruling and is considering an appeal.

“There was no naked short selling in this case,” Stephen Senderowitz, a lawyer representing optionsXpress, said in an email to Reuters.

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