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short
Sign in to saveAlso known as short selling, shorting, going short, short position, short sale, selling short, bear, short-selling
practice of selling securities or other financial instruments that are not currently owned
Wikidata facts
Show 3 more facts
- described by source
- Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition
- opposite of
- long position
- hashtag
- shortselling
via Wikidata · CC0
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Schematic representation of physical short selling in two steps. The short seller borrows shares and immediately sells them. The short seller then expects the price to decrease, after which the seller can profit by purchasing the shares to return to the lender.
In finance, being short in an asset means investing in such a way that the investor will profit if the market value of the asset falls. This is the opposite of the more common long position, where the investor will profit if the market value of the asset rises. An investor that sells an asset short is, as to that asset, a short seller.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “short” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.