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by navait 1927 days ago
A lot of people get angry when you bet against success.
1 comments

Which is ludicrous. Success is not a uniform good, nothing wrong with shorting Enron stock or bonds issued by the Third Reich.
Also nothing wrong with bringing an irrationally high price down to something more rational... ordinary citizens that are sellers get hurt, but citizens who are ordinary buyers are helped.

The company is hurt if it wants to do a secondary stock offering, but is helped if it wants to do a stock buyback.

Also, short selling increases the amount of money going into the dividend pool. If some stock has 140% short interest and issues 10 million dollars in dividends, short sellers have to pony up 14 million dollars, and the long position holders share those 24 million dollars.

Disclosure: never sold short, but I am in the financial services industry. I do not speak for my employer.