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Regarding limited trading: anyone but a retail trader could trade the forward OTC rather than this illiquid thing on the exchange. We can trade our guesses for tomorrow's price (which is really the live current price) as much as we want, and it will just wash out tomorrow.

Regarding length of ownership: so I make a fund which owns an LTSE-listed stock for a longer term, and people trade my fund instead.

Ultimately, neither of those things is much use, nor even necessary. A much stronger driver for long-termism would be to derive the dividend from the last 3 years of profits; since prices are estimates of future value and future dividend, the actual value of those would be smoothed; if any action can only make a small difference to the dividend, there is much less focus on quarterly results.

A formula or at least limits on dividends (no windfalls) would reduce the interest to activist investors who might see a pot of cash and seek to liberate it.

> That is, if I were an automated machine trader, I would add LTSE and their slow price changes and compare them to NYSE and make zillions.

Limiting trading frequency, limiting order types, and disallowing shorting would create even better opportunities for automated trading than what LTSE would provide.

> Shorting is never a long-term game and should be banned, as it never does the company any favours.

The economy benefits when market prices more accurately reflect relative value between assets. Hampering the ability of the market to lower a price that is too high never does the economy any favors. More specifically, it harms investors who buy the overpriced stock and it harms other companies raising capital who merit a higher relative price.

> & disallow shorting.

Why would you completely disallow shorting ?

I'd think that in such a framework, shorting would just need to become a longer term bet. So one could offer something like 2,5,10 year LEAPs, but restrict their trading to a window of 1 week per year (e.g. one can trade derivatives as much as one wants, but only during week X, which is the week when all derivatives expire, and all derivatives are long term).

Also for options, one would need to always require traders to be covered with the actual stock.

If traders have to be covered with the actual stock, would that mean they can only short Foo shares up to the amount they own? Surely that's equivalent to just selling your holdings?

Or are there people who'll loan out their stocks for 10 years, trusting the borrower has enough cash not to go bankrupt in 10 years no matter what happens?

> If traders have to be covered with the actual stock, would that mean they can only short Foo shares up to the amount they own? Surely that's equivalent to just selling your holdings?

I had selling a call option in mind.

If you own stock, you’re loaning it out to short sellers all the time. Almost any brokerage includes in its contracts the right to loan out its customer’s interest to shorts.

The short seller has an account with a brokerage, the broker is ultimately on the hook for making sure that any borrowed short interest is returned. This is why brokers have margin requirements.

Not only it's a bad idea to ban shorting, but it's almost impossible to do outside regulatory action by the SEC and even then.

Shorting is essentially borrowing the control of stock to some other party. That's it. It doesn't have to be done on the market, it can be done in a private, confidential contract where I oblige myself to sell my stock when directed to do so by yourself, provided adequate warranties exist that you will cover the price difference when I want to purchase it back.

For this ceding of control, I get paid. The market only "sees" regular buying and selling of stock.

Ignoring the SEC for a moment, I don’t follow your reasoning. Why couldn’t buying shares require you to sign a contract that you’re not going to engage in various activities such as shorting? That would preempt any private arrangement you attempt to make. You of course could make an illicit secret agreement but you’d still be breaking and invalidating the contract you bought your shares under exposing yourself to various risks and penalties

How would you detect that, though?

Exercise to be left to the reader. How is collusion and conspiracy detected now?

I believe that's the SEC's job.

I suppose, mostly by chance, or by technical mistakes if the perpetrators?

Presumably by auditing all the prime brokers.

Betting is contrary to investing but anyway, going along on your argument : Betting on a company failure on long term is called "Insurance". Insurance companies bet that your house will burn for example. Do you think it's viable on long term for individuals (a.k.a, lambda people) to bet ( "invest" ) this way ?

continuous trading isn't really necessary... could do a once a week or once a day crossing.

i feel like "more votes the longer you hold the stock" is also a mistake - it should be, your votes are higher weighted if you agree to a longer lockup. 10 year lockup, lots of votes. no lockup, very little...

That's an interesting idea, but in practice surely shareholder voting power has negligible influence on company management compared to share price incentives?

Maybe? But that's the whole LTSE schtick, right?

I like that voting idea a lot!

> Shorting should be banned... as it never does the company any favours.

No, here are my 5 reasons or examples why shorting is good.

_1) Shorts can be beneficial to the company:_

Tesla made a killing from being one of the most shorted stocks. As the stock price rows, it experienced frequent short squeezes as the $TSLAQ short positions holders experienced forced liquidation. Their capital became transferred from the shorts to the longs further boosting the positions of the long investors. $NKLA, $BYND, and $PTON as well.

_2) Shorts Beneficial to long investors:_

Long investors sometimes receive interest payments from short sellers. Heavily shorted stocks become Hard to Borrow (HTB) due to high short interest. HTB stocks cost money to short as represented by an annual interest payment. Robinhood traders with large blocks of HTB stock receive interest payments. IBKR traders using the stock yield enhancement program also receive interest payments. Furthermore, investors of popular Vanguard Index Funds such as VOO and VTI outperform the benchmark by a tiny amount. This is because Vanguard lends out a small portion of the heavily shorted stocks in it's index for interest payments. Then it takes those interest payments and reinvests it back into the ETF further boosting the price.

_3) Shorts allow smart investors to profit regardless of the type of market:_

Hedge funds will short overvalued stocks and long undervalued stocks so that regardless of the market direction, the hedge fund will still make a profit. This stance can reduce portfolio volatility and performance rollercoaster long-only investing can be.

Despite all of these positives for short selling, it would be interesting to see an exchange that bans short selling just for the sake of differentiation. It could never be a popular exchange due to the lack of traded options but the differentiation might be enough to allow it to succeed.

I agree. I ran a DMA/Equity algo and internal prop desk's tech at 2 major banks and you are 100% right. Any delay (artificial or real) would be what we would target for artibitrage.

Best case scenario you make wider spreads and folks somewhere get paid more to market make with higher risks...

> & disallow shorting.

That's a very bad idea.

> Shorting is never a long-term game and should be banned, as it never does the company any favours.

The purpose of shorting isn't to help the company.

If shorting wasn't allowed, Wirecard would've gone on for much longer. Short sellers are an important part of the market.

Are naked shorts still allowed? Maybe prevent those.

I'm curious re the issue of shorting and fixing about your thoughts with respect to liquidity being a good. The derivatives tend to be justified as market liquidity boosters. But if we are intentionally aiming to move out the time horizon of trades, is there then a way to distinguish those techniques as "unhealthy liquidity"?