So the European Union's 27-nation bloc is setting new rules for short selling and derivatives trading. The European Commission set up the European Securities and Market Authority to police European markets.

Michel Barnier, European Union commissioner in charge of reform said: "Today we are proposing rules -- so we know who is doing what and who owes what to who."

Bearish traders should be using the recent strength in the equity markets to identify short opportunities. The S&P 500 is currently trading above 1,100 and has rallied very sharply off of the 1,040-1,050 level in just a matter of days.

This surge in equities appears to be driven by a combination of short covering and better than expected economic numbers. Rather than getting bullish here, however, it may be time to put out some tactical shorts. Traders that have been buying the highs and selling the lows in anticipation of a breakout of the current trading range have been consistently burned.

Short sellers increased their bets against tech stocks for the period ending May 28, according to data from the NYSE and NASDAQ.

The short interest in NYSE-traded tech shares AMD (AMD) and Texas Instruments (TXN) were up sharply. The short interest in AMD was up 19% to 61.6 million shares. Share short in TXN rose 27% to 27.9 million.

Among NASDAQ-traded stocks, the short interest in Intel (INTC) rose 36% to 61.3 million. Shares short in Broadcom (BRCM) were up 41% to 15.9 million. The short interest in Qualcomm (QCOM), Micron (MU), and Seagate (STX) also rose.

Tech shares with falling short interest included Microsoft (MSFT), down 14% to 57 million and Dell (DELL) down 14% to 45.3 million.

In yet another surprise move, Germany wants to widen its ban on naked short selling. According to the Wall Street Journal, Germany's Finance Ministry proposed extending its ban on "naked short selling" to cover all stocks and euro currency derivatives not intended for hedging.

Naked short sales covers sales not owned by the seller and isn't borrowed to cover the position while it is held. Many politicians in Germany see naked short selling as a way to manipulate the markets. What happens is that naked short sales can dwarf the underlying assets.

At long last some details of short trades by Goldman Sachs (GS) are coming to light. During the height of the crisis, Goldman netted $50 million in one day shorting the market, or betting against the mortgage market.

It probably was the intensified short selling, not only by Goldman but by other large banks, that drove prices down so fast and so hard. When all the investigations are completed on the other big banks, we'll probably find the real, behind-the-scenes trading strategies that brought us to our knees.

Remember just a few short months ago when the financial markets were in a tailspin? Day after day, selling came in to the market. Short selling accelerated. Then came "naked short selling." The markets ended up being chaotic and the government had to step in. With frantic short selling going on, the SEC banned naked short sales of a few select banks for a few days.

Now we fast forward to Europe. The same scenario is being played out against the euro. Hedge funds have increased their short positions. Traders are buying credit default swaps (CDSs) supposedly as protection against a Greek default. But very much like the U.S. meltdown, traders are also buying naked CDSs. Traders holding naked CDSs do not have an underlying position that they are hedging.

China wants to join the international trading club. Regulators approved "in principle" the trading tools of stock index futures, short selling and margin trading. These trading practices have long been used in London, New York and most international trading exchanges.

It will take about three months for the new changes to take effect. Meanwhile,stocks of major Chinese brokerage houses were bid higher in anticipation that they will be making margin loans to investors.

Two key elements of the market's rise -- short-sellers covering their positions and money managers looking for quick profits -- are waning, reducing buy-side volume.

This will eventually impair the market's ability to sustain itself as more shorts are entering the market and more managers are preparing to bank profits before the end of their year on Nov. 1.

Next: Sign #10: An eerie similarity

The conspiracy theorists have been arguing for month that aggressive short-selling and illegal naked short selling played a significant role in the financial collapse.

Bad news: The data just doesn't back that up.

Judge Donald S. Goldman of the Superior Court of New Jersey dismissed Biovail's (NYSE: BVF) lawsuit against SAC Capital Advisors last week, saying that he lacked jurisdiction.

The lawsuit, originally filed in 2006, accuses SAC of colluding with analysts and other firms to produce misleading research designed to drive down the company's share price -- allowing the firm to profit from its large short position in the company's stock

Goldman wrote that he had not evaluated the merit of Biovail's claims, but did say that the company had failed to show that it was entitled to damages, even if its allegations were true. Another judge who had dismissed another Biovail-related lawsuit said that the company's history of securities fraud and run-ins with regulators gave the case a "tainted origin".

Investor and trader Mishko Janusevich, he of decent-sized net worth fame, had a mantra that he used to repeat while outlining the top, new stock shorts that appeared that day, as determined by technical indicators.

He would stand next to the overhead projected stock chart at the front of the trading room, point to the stock chart and recite, "You see this stock? You see that it's dropped $8 in past two days? You think it can't drop any more? SELL THAT STOCK, it's dropping more!!"

Has your broker repeatedly sold you on the "safe" investment vehicle, the mutual fund? Investing in a wide variety of prominent companies, with solid, long-term track records, mutual funds have been an easy-to-understand and popular investment choice for decades.

Mutual funds are hugely diversified, holding large stakes in recognizable names such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Citigroup (NYSE: C), Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), General Electric (NYSE: GE), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), and Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM).

The Wall Street Journal headline reports (subscription required) that the SEC is "deluged" with support for the return of the uptick rule. Investors who've watched their portfolios hemorrhage value are quick to blame those mean, nasty hedge fund short seller-types.

I'm going to write something here that probably flies in the face of what most people are thinking but here it is: Who the heck cares what most people think about the uptick rule? Seriously. Of course most investors are going to oppose anything that makes it easier for stock prices to fall but the role of the SEC is to maintain a fair and orderly stock market -- not to appease the short-term oriented desires of people who want to look at their portfolio statements and see black.

Options and trading specialist Bernie Schaeffer selects stocks based on a combination of fundamental, technical and sentiment-based metrics.

His research leads to long trading positions for his Schaeffer's Master Portfolio and short trading plays for his Schaeffer's Short Selling services.

Here's a long at four of his latest trading ideas -- long positions in Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and VMware (NYSE: VMW) as well as short position in Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL).

Newly-installed SEC Chairman told a public round-table meeting that she has "made it a priority to evaluate the issue of short-selling regulation, and ensure that any future policies in this area are the result of a deliberate and thoughtful process."

The SEC has floated a number of potential proposals for dealing with the short-selling "problem," including making it illegal to short sell stocks that are down 10% or more. One popular "solution" is to bring back the recently revoked uptick rule that required short sellers to execute trades only on an uptick -- if the last trade was at $20.00, you could only sell short at $20.01 or higher.