Series 79: Prohibited Activity

Prohibited Activity

Rule 105 prohibits any purchase from an underwriter or broker-dealer by any person—not just broker-dealers or others involved in the distribution—who shorted the security during the restricted period. The rule formerly only applied to “covering” activity, but it was amended in 2007 to crack down on various strategies that were being used to disguise conduct that violated the rule. The reasoning behind this rule is that shorting a stock before an offering has even been priced