The NYTimes likens the stock market to a new sport, footminton:

… across Wall Street, many of the basic mechanisms of the marketplace broke down after the Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Friday morning that it would ban short selling in nearly 800 financial stocks, making it harder for people to bet against those securities, and that it also would force investors to disclose those trades…

Computers that automatically buy and sell for big investors hit snags because they were not programmed for such a restriction. Securities firms and money managers that routinely sell short to hedge against possible losses wondered how they would cope. In certain stocks and funds traded on New York Stock Exchange, some prices and trades were “erroneous,” a spokesman said.

The surge in financial shares was driven at least in part by traders who were forced to buy those stocks to cover earlier short sales, raising doubts about whether the rally will last.

Hedge fund managers who made vast profits betting against the nation’s financial titans called the ban unfair, and said the move would only prolong the financial crisis. Some traders said they were no longer betting on the intrinsic health of companies, but rather on what the government might do next. Others simply withdrew from the market.

“Some of my clients are literally closing their books and going on their vacation for two weeks — they can’t operate in this environment,” said Meredith A. Whitney, a financial services analyst. “You pack up and come back and play the game when you know what the rules are.”

One hedge fund manager, who declined to be named, likened the changes to “turning a football game into badminton.”

[snip]

“People have definitely been saying that this is no longer an investor’s market, nor even really a trader’s market — it’s all entirely speculation on what the government is going to be doing next,” said a broker at a Wall Street firm, who was not authorized to talk to the press. “Anyone who thinks they have a handle on where things are going is deluding themselves.”

[snip]

Some hedge fund managers complained bitterly that they had been singled out, even as they were among the few to properly manage risk. Those whom the government had propped up were the investment banks, whose hundreds of billions of dollars in losses arose from reckless risks undertaken to raise profits to hedge-fund-like levels.

Punish the winners, bailout the losers.  Turn a contact sport into one that employs a “shuttlecock”… How very American of us.

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