Let remisiers buy-in for clients who short sell by mistake

IN "Time to rethink the need for buying-in" (BT, Oct 30), R Sivanithy advocates the revival of the cash market to complement the current buying-in process of the Singapore Exchange (SGX).

As he rightly points out, most shorts are accidental and are done by retail investors or remisiers themselves. In the past, these were allowed to be amended in their remisiers' error-in-trade (EIT) accounts, and would have been covered back the same day or the next market day.

The current buying-in by SGX is essentially a cash market whereby settlement is on buy-in trade date plus one (T+1). However, this is done only on T+3 after the error trade such that settlement then takes place on T+4 which is the initial settlement date of the ready market.