Matt Taibbi has a new blog post about Goldman Sachs lobbying against restrictions against naked short-selling.
True to form, their lobbying is shamelessly self-serving, but Taibbi managed to get access to some of their lobbyists "fact sheets". It includes two data points that ostensibly contradicts my theory about short-sellers (or speculators in general) as trend-followers. The first data point is about the drop in short-interest that coincided with the dramatic fall in the stock market in Sept-Oct 2008. But this fall can easily be attributed to the extraordinary action of the SEC in banning short-selling during that period. The second and much more interesting data point is from earlier this year, when short interest spiked up by some 10% in the middle of a stock market rally. (This is indeed intriguing, but I am not ready to give up on my theory just yet based on just one data point - maybe there was something unusual going on there that we don't know about!) Anyway, here's the data and you can decide for yourself: http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/files/2009/09/goldmanlobbying.pdf http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/09/29/sec-weighs-new-rules-for-lending-of-securities-wsj-com/#more-833 -raghu. -- Dyslexics of the world, UNTIE! _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
