Sunday, September 21, 2008

Australia Bans All Short Selling of Stocks for at Least Thirty Days

This move might make some sense on the basis given that if short-selling of financial stocks is banned in the UK and the US there could be pressure on Australian financial stocks. But why then ban shorting all Australian stocks? If this list is complete then almost no shorting is going on anyway. But the situation with shorting in Australia is so unclear I don't know if this is a complete inventory. It seems that even in the Great Depression the US didn't make any blanket bans on short-selling.

Of course you can still short stock index futures. They'd have to close down the futures market to stop that.

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