WASHINGTON — The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that she is making the issue of new rules restricting short-selling a priority as the agency heard from an array of interests about ways to limit trades that bet against a stock.
Investors and lawmakers have been clamoring for the SEC to put new brakes on trading moves they say worsened the market’s downturn.
“There are people very concerned about this,” Jeffrey Brown, Charles Schwab’s chief lobbyist, said at a public roundtable meeting organized by the SEC. The brokerage firm has been barraged with appeals from customers for it to seek a remedy, he said.
Short-selling involves borrowing a company’s shares, selling them, then buying them back when the stock falls and returning them to the lender. The short seller pockets the difference.
