RE: BE WARY OF REPORTED SHORT POSITIONS ! I agree, shorting should not be allowed. And great post by the way. It also shouldn't be allowed because the regular retail investor doesn't have access to it. So one can be manipulated into buying a stock on a recommondation they read, or saw on TV or read in an analyst's recommondations. The latter is the most annoying because they might make a target price based on the time they wrote it, let's say January. But now it's July, and that company's expenses may have risen, the commodity prices may have dropped and in essence the target price should now be adjusted. But it's not for whatever reason. Retail investors think WOW target $17 and it's $6 today! I'm in. Only to learn later that shorts are heavy, it's heading to $4 and targets FINALLY get adjusted a year later to $7.
But I especially think shorting shouldn't be legal because regular folk do not have access to it. The claim is because it's high risk and therefore only for professionals....... well..... so the guys with the biggest trading accounts (hedge funds) can short away, while we keep adding new, hard earned money into the pool only to get it evaporated by the shorts..... sweet..... so they make money going up, and down.
Also, there are Put Options and ETF's that do shorting so there are so many mechanisms out there to manipulate a stock one way or another. I think Options should stay legal because they're kinda like betting on a horse, per say. But shorting itself should not be legal. A hedge fund with a plan can drive a stock so far down that retail investors can't swallow anymore loss and they in essence sell their now cheap holdings directly to the shorter at a cheap price because the shorter borrowed the shares and has to buy them back. So a guy with $50 million can push a share wayyyyy down and crush my few thousand dollars, I get scared, sell my shares blindly, that guy buys them cheap and then pushes them right back up......
Moral to the story. Ignore noise because you never know the motive of the person who is making the noise. If you believe in a company, you like it's fundamentals and nothing has changed there, then you just have to wait patiently and eventually you will be rewarded....... of course, if fundamentals change, THEN you may want to reconsider your position. But surely do not listen to some hype from the peanut gallery that 'This stock is going to crash to $2' when the peanut has NO FUNDAMENTAL proof of why it's going to $2. That peanut is most likely trying to spread fear amongst weak hands so he can get it at a great value and ride it right back up............. It really is a casino. Theororetically it's investing. But it's actually a very complex video game.