Quote:I guess this confirms that changing the cusip # does not do anything to stop shorting or naked shorting. We can put that myth to bed.
Not quite correct. Changing CUSIPS does not do anything to make the shorts cover as you have mentioned. I don't believe anyone has actually claimed this on this board. Plenty of that confusion on other boards.
On the other hand, changing CUSIP does make a big difference with illegal and legal naked shorts. Just because we haven't seen them cover yet doesn't mean they don't exist. When they do cover, it will be quite a short squeeze imo.
Where Naked Shorts Go to Die
"Reverse mergers and reverse splits typically result in a change in the CUSIP, the nine-digit identification symbol assigned to a public stock.
Once that CUSIP changes, the naked shorter has no apparent way to close out the naked short position. No stock under the old CUSIP number exists anymore; it all automatically converts to the new CUSIP.
Those trades can sit in the Obligation Warehouse forever, in theory. But the “aged fails” — essentially orphaned naked short transactions — remain on the naked shorter’s balance sheet as a liability to be paid later.
By DiIorio’s reckoning, then, the cycle of naked shorting and reverse splits would inevitably result in an ever-increasing number of aged fails. And if that was happening, and those liabilities grew bigger and bigger, then federal regulators could see the outlines of the scheme on any financial statement.
DiIorio believed Knight accounted for its aged fails in the “sold not yet purchased” liability on its balance sheet. That’s supposed to be an inventory of stocks for use in future market making, which goes up and down as orders are filled. But DiIorio says it was a hiding place for a billowing structural liability.
And consider this: According to its own financial reports, Knight’s “sold not yet purchased” liability jumped from $385 million at the beginning of 2008 to $1.9 billion by mid-2011.
Jim Angel, the business professor, said there could be other explanations — such as Knight’s growth as a company during that period — for why the “sold not yet purchased” liability ballooned. But, he said, market makers are typically “in the moving, not storing, business, and like to keep their inventories as small as possible.”
DiIorio had no such doubts. He saw the fact that Knight was blowing a hole in its own balance sheet as undeniable evidence of the naked shorting play.
KCG spokesperson Sophie Sohn was asked specifically about that claim and declined to comment.
If DiIorio was correct, Knight was driving penny stocks down over and over again with naked shorting, then not actually closing the trades, and racking up enormous paper liabilities.
This was even more complicated than he thought. It was time to call the cops."
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