Back in the era when there were shorts on KXL (and we had our heads handed to us), someone here was proposing that as many as possible of us KXL-longs structure our holdings so that our own shares couldn't be used to short against us.

I had a difficulty doing that as my accounts are nearly all margin accounts and by definition that means your own stock can be shorted - including shorted against you. But if you have a cash account, you can require that your shares not be loaned (for shorting), or you can put in way-high-price sell orders to lock them in against being borrowed.

I don't know if it was Portee who suggested we lock in our shares, so that they don't get used against us, or who it was - whoever it was deserves some credit. Because - the exact same situation happened to Ford Motor Co. shareholders. There is even a "caught red-handed" letter from a broker, asking big shareholders to borrow their stock so that it could be shorted against them, and offering 13% per annum as a fee paid to borrow it, a high fee!

Here is the link: click here

I was skeptical at the time, but from the above article I can see it's a real issue. So credit to Portee or whoever it was that suggested we lock in our shares. The people I know from this board could have locked in maybe 2m shares, and that would have helped.

As a side issue, a bunch of us complained about the shorts when they were there, but they proved that they were the "smart money" - they made money off us all the way down. Now that there are no shorts, that means that - it's us that are the "smart money"! all best / cedar