Short Selling Stocks
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How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short
There are two sides to everything, except the stock market. In the stock market there is only one side--the right side. In certain market conditions, selling short can put you on the right side, but it takes real knowledge and market know-how as well as a lot of courage to assume a short position. The mechanics of short selling are relatively simple, yet virtually no one, including most professionals, knows how to sell short correctly. In How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short, William J. O'Neil offers you the information needed to pursue an effective short selling strategy, and shows you--with detailed, annotated charts--how to make the moves that will ultimately take you in the right direction. From learning how to set price limits to timing your short sales, the simple and timeless advice found within these pages will keep you focused on the task at hand and let you trade with the utmost confidence.
What Is Stock Short Selling?
The selling of a stock equity security that the seller does not own, or any sale that is completed by the delivery of a security borrowed by the seller. Short sellers assume that they will be able to buy the stock at a lower amount than the price at which they sold short.
Selling a stock short is the opposite of buying a stock long. Short sellers make money if the stock goes down in price. Short selling is an advanced trading strategy with many unique risks and pitfalls. Novice investors are advised to avoid short sales until they are properly educated in doing it.
Short selling has been around ever since the beginning of the stock market. But many people don't think short selling is good for companies and the market. They think its un-patriotic or damaging to the economic health health of companies and the country they are based in. The reality is that stocks go up and they go down for a multitude of reasons. Fair equal treatment to buy or sell short a stock provides liquidity and the best balance of fair value for the price of the stock.
People who don't invest or trade the markets at all, blame short sellers for some of the worst company failures in the world's financial markets. Company executives have accused them of driving down their company's stock prices. Governments have before and still do from time to time, temporarily halted short selling to help markets recover and have strengthened laws against some short selling techniques. Some governments have banned short selling completely. Some governments have even gone as far as proposing and implemeting strong legal actions against short sellers. This has happened throughout history in various countries and industries.
Bill O'Neil the founder of Investor's Business Daily and the CANSLIM stock investing method, wrote about short selling in his book "How To Make Money Selling Stocks Short", and concluded that "few investors really understand how to buy stocks successfully. Even fewer understand when to sell stocks. Virtually no one, including most professionals, knows how to sell short correctly."
The fact is that if done proprerly, the risks of short selling are about the same to the risk of buying long stock positions,.
In the stock options, futures and forex markets buying and selling short is normal practice. Let the free market have its freedom to do what it will. In the long term, all people will benefit much more than letting markets move parabolicly higher creating huge bubbles that end up in price collapses anyway.
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