If I could add, reddit has a ton of conspiracy theories floating around about this stuff, e.g. "shorts haven't covered because X". They're very hard to refute or even investigate as a layperson because I cannot find the data or it's not published at all. So this lack of transparency doesn't just tilt the playing field, it allows misinformation to spread more easily.
Oh, I thought of another (not exactly transparency):
- If you lend out your shares, you can't "sell" them until you've recalled them and had them delivered to you.
If the float is X, then there shouldn't be more than X shares available to sell at any given time. In the current system shorting increases apparent supply which devalues the stock.
- Total short interest in every stock updated daily, both settled and in progress.
- (edit) report daily fails to deliver (not just a running total), and published at T+2 rather than every couple weeks.
- For every trade, publish whether it's a short sale or sale of an owned asset.
- SEC tracks each companies' daily borrows and fails to deliver, with consequences.
- Every short sale must be submitted with a borrow agreement from someone who has already agreed to lend you the shares. SEC checks these are not fraudulent or frequently cancelled.
- Everyone should have access to the trading data that you currently need a Bloomberg terminal for.
- Every share has a serial number. Every trade must include a list of serial numbers of every share in that trade, with proof that you own or were lent those exact shares.
Like I said, I"m no expert, so responses welcome.