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Short selling: all you need to know

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JoshiaButle692
Short selling: all you need to know

When an investor buys a stock with the expectation that its price will climb in the future, she is said to be going long on it. When an investor sells a stock short, he expects the price of the stock to fall.


The act of selling a stock that the seller does not own is known as short selling. A short sale, more specifically, is the selling of a security that the seller does not own but promises to supply. That may appear to be a difficult topic, but it is actually quite simple. The premise is that if you short sell a stock, your broker will lend you the shares. The stock will come from the brokerage's own inventory, a customer's inventory, or another brokerage firm's inventory.


The stock is sold, and the funds are credited to your account. You must eventually "close" the short by purchasing and returning the equivalent number of shares to your broker (a process known as "covering"). If the stock price falls, you can buy it back at the lower price and profit on the difference. If the stock price rises, you must repurchase it at the higher price, resulting in a loss.

You can usually hold a short for as long as you want most of the time. If the lender wants the stock you borrowed back, you could be obliged to cover. Brokerages can't sell what they don't have, so you'll have to cover or find new shares to borrow. Being "called away" is the term for this. It doesn't happen very often, but it can happen if certain conditions are met.


This is referred to as "calling away." It doesn't happen often, but it can happen if a large number of investors are selling a security short. Because you don't own the stock (you borrowed it and subsequently sold it), any dividends or rights declared during the loan must be paid to the stock's lender. If the stock splits while you're shorting it, you'll owe twice as many shares at half the price.


Shorting is motivated by two key factors:




1. To make a guess

The most obvious motivation to short a stock or market is to profit from an expensive asset. The most famous example of this occurred in 1992, when George Soros "broke the Bank of England." He bet $10 billion on the British pound falling, and he was correct. Soros made $1 billion from the trade the next night. His profit finally amounted to over $2 billion.


2. to act as a buffer

Few sophisticated money managers use shorting as an active investment technique for reasons we'll address later (unlike Soros). Shorts are used by the majority of investors to hedge their positions. This suggests that they're using short positions to safeguard other long bets.

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