The Securities and Exchange Commission voted Wednesday to end price restrictions on short selling, meaning that investors seeking to sell a share that they do not own will no longer be barred from doing so because the price of the stock is falling.
The 5-to-0 vote, ending a rule that had been in place since 1938, when short sellers were blamed by some critics for having caused the 1929 market crash and the Depression that followed, came as the commission also voted to make it harder to engage in naked shorting, the practice of selling shares that have not been purchased or borrowed.