Countdown to short selling: between now and the end of the month, Consob will have to decide whether or not to extend the ban on short-selling. "By 30 September the decision will be taken by the individual national authorities in a coordinated way", confirmed the president of the supervisory institute, Giuseppe Vegas, specifying that "it is not just an Italian problem, but a European one" and that in the last weeks the decision to interrupt the speculative practice "has cooled the negative dynamics of the market".
According to the head of Consob, short selling "has not proved to be the monster we thought", but "they have not been irrelevant" because "they facilitate speculative behavior and if liquidity providers ask to be exempt, it means that they have had of losses". For example, as regards "an Italian bank, which ended up in the eye of the storm, short selling was quite important". In any case, Vegas argues that it is "difficult to calculate the quantitative effect of stopping short-selling."
