Quotes About Short-selling

I've learned there's a big difference between a long-focused value investor and a good short-seller. That difference is psychological and I think it falls into the realm of behavioral finance.

By incentivizing Wall Street players to sniff out inefficient or corrupt companies and bet against them, short-selling acts as a sort of policing system; legal short-sellers have been instrumental in helping expose firms like Enron and WorldCom.

I've learned there's a big difference between a long-focused value investor and a good short-seller. That difference is psychological and I think it falls into the realm of behavioral finance.

I'll always understand the Schadenfreude aspect to short-selling. I get that no one will always like it. I'm also convinced to the deepest part of my bones that short-selling plays the role of real-time financial watchdog. It's one of the few checks and balances in the market.

And so it can be very much in the interest of bank A to sell-short bank B shares, or buy CDSes on bank B, because they have exposure to bank B. It's the responsible thing to do as a fiduciary, and yet if everyone does it at the same time, it's destabilizing because everyone is selling.

The New Sell & Sell Short: How to Take Profits, Cut Losses, and Benefit from Price Declines (John Wiley & Sons, 2011).

had doubts. Short-selling is part of how a healthy market determines prices. A

If you're a short-seller, that's a cacophony of negative reinforcement. You're basically told that you're wrong in every way imaginable every day. It takes a certain type of individual to drown that noise and negative reinforcement out and to remind oneself that their work is accurate and what they're hearing is not.

Excessive hype, bankruptcy, cash burning like autumn leaves - such is the stuff of short-selling.

I think the hedge-fund industry has taken a reputational turn for the worse, this dog-eat-dog stuff. I'm not just talking about Herbalife or J. C. Penney, but in other situations where the media really focuses on who's long and who's short. I don't think it's a good thing for the industry.

It's almost sickening now that the regulators 'on the beat' while the biggest credit collapse in modern financial history unfolded are now patting themselves on the back for their 'brave' stance on short-selling!

Short-sellers perform a useful function in the market as conduits of negative information, and shorts often complain that they are discriminated against by regulators.