I will keep this short, and for anyone looking for actual legal advice please contact an attorney registered to practice law with their respective state bar.
However, as a law student, I have spent quite a significant time combing through “REG SHO Final Amendments” filed and dated 2/26/2010. Found here
As all apes have been wondering this week, something seems to be off regarding the share count and the information that has been provided to us. As Matt Kohrs, Rawlies, and other apes have discussed, the numbers do not add up… by a lot. Although most of us have felt a mixture of self-doubt this week or may be questioning our sanity (or existence), I figured I would share something the SEC has said itself in this filing.
If you look on page 50, the SEC itself has said,
- “We recognize the ability to obtain a short position through the use of derivative products such as options, futures, contracts for differences (floating-price convertible securities?), warrants, CDS or other swaps (so-called “synthetic short sales”) or other instruments (such as inverse leveraged exchange traded funds) may undermine our goals for adopting short sale price restrictions.”
The SEC further notes,
- “We are also concerned that synthetic short positions may increase as a result of the adoption of Rule 201.”
It gets better,
- “we believe that applying a Rule 201-type rule to derivatives securities would significantly complicate the implementation process.”
What did they decide?
“[we] have determined at this time not to modify the definition of “covered security” from that proposed and, therefore, the scope of securities to which Rule 201 will apply.”
TLDR;
- synthetic shorts are real according to the SEC, the SEC knew this could be abused back in 2010 when rule 201 was implemented, and AMC’s numbers still do not add up according to the (lack) of information available to us.
Link to Matt Kohr’s analyzing the math: here
Reddit Post Matt Kohr’s is referencing: here