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Short people got no reason to live

Never Have So Many Short Sellers Made So Much Money

I wrote about short selling before, and responses were that short selling was bad for the investor, and only possible because of relaxing the uptick rule. Nevertheless, as Bloomberg reports, the smart money is selling short:

More than $1.4 trillion of equities worldwide are now on loan, about a third higher than at the start of 2007, data compiled by Spitalfields Advisors, the London-based firm specializing in securities lending, show. Almost all of that is being used to speculate that shares will fall, according to James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown University who studies short selling. The global economic slowdown, $453 billion in bank losses and an explosion of funds that can profit from stock declines spurred the increase in short selling, helping send 22 of 23 countries in the MSCI World Index into bear markets.

No wonder Cramer wants Nascar fans to invest in the market. Everyone else is into commodities or selling short.

What did they say in The Sting - "No sense being a grifter if its the same as being a citizen."


Comments (1)

It was the Randy Newman reference that suckered me in... being on the vertically-challenged side, I started out hating that song only for it to become an anthem.

Aside from that, I have nothing of substance or on point to add. Sell long, sell short....

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