‘SEC needs to make it fairer for retail investors’

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States needs to look into the practice of shorting stocks, an amateur investor has said.

Sam Daftarian was one of the many social media day traders who bought shares in companies which had been shorted by professional investors.

Hedge funds had bet that shares in companies like GameStop, AMC Entertainment and BlackBerry would fall.

But the funds suffered major losses when amateur investors, who swapped tips on social media sites, drove the share prices up.

“Companies are shorting with over 100% of the available stocks of a corporation,” Mr Daftarian told BBC World News.

“It’s okay if you want to short, but you should never be able to borrow more than the number of stocks available for that company,” he said.