726
depreciation brought about by the very persons who sold them the stock.
Depreciating the value of shares in Public Companies attacks the credit of those Companies and alarms investors, whether on the spot or at a distance, who, seeing their property being daily depreciated, may be influenced to realize precipitately.
Hongkong is not, like London or other great cities, a large or generally wealthy community, and when local capitalists throw their holdings of any one stock on the market it might with difficulty be taken up, but when, in addition, they by means of time bargains offer the same stock two and three times over, it is sufficient to precipitate a panic.
It is not for the purpose of obstructing legitimate enterprise or preventing sales "on time", that the Ordinance is desirable, but it is to prevent those who do so either by wealth, organized sales of what they do not possess, from attacking and victimising those who have only small means, and it is believed such protection will be afforded by inserting the numbers of shares on all time contracts.
An