open to abuse. Example, a large company wants to completely obliterate their smaller competition so they expend millions just shorting the heck out of their competition, then buy all the worth way less stock due to the short and viola! they've devalued their competition and now own chunks of it at a much, much lower price. Maybe there are regulations against that but I've always thought that if I was a multi-billion dollar company, I'd leverage that buying power in devaluing the stocks of any lower competitors and force them out of business or acquisition through short selling/buying devalued stocks.