Key Takeaways
- Short stock trades occur because sellers believe a stock's price is headed downward.
- Shorting stock involves selling batches of stock to make a profit, then buying it back cheaply when the price goes down.
- Stock prices can be volatile, and you cannot always repurchase shares at a lower price whenever you want.
What does it mean to 'short' a stock?
Shorting stock, also known as "short selling," involves the sale of stock that the seller does not own or has taken on loan from a broker. 1 Investors who short stock must be willing to take on the risk that their gamble might not work. Short stock trades occur because sellers believe a stock's price is headed downward.
How to short stocks for beginners?
3 Possible Trades On Netflix Stock
- Buy NFLX Shares At Current Levels Investors who are not concerned with daily moves in price and who believe in the long-term potential of the company could consider investing ...
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- Bear Put Spread
What is meant by shorting a stock?
What Is Shorting a Stock Example?
- Here’s an example of shorting a stock:
- $AAPL (Apple) is at $300 resistance level
- You take short position on Apple of $100 shares. 100 x $300 = – $30,000)
- Apple falls to $290 and then you cover your position
- Your Profit = $1,000 ($300-$290 = $10. $10 x 100 shares = $1,000)
When do you short sell a stock?
Gillies: You didn't see this ... There are reasons to look at short interest. But if your reason is, "Oh, these guys. Smart people short the stock, I should also short the stock." Just like that coat-tailing. Don't do that. Discounted offers are only ...
What does it mean to short in stock?
Short selling occurs when an investor borrows a security and sells it on the open market, planning to buy it back later for less money. Short-sellers bet on, and profit from, a drop in a security's price. This can be contrasted with long investors who want the price to go up.
Is it good to short a stock?
Shorting stocks is a way to profit from falling stock prices. A fundamental problem with short selling is the potential for unlimited losses. Shorting is typically done using margin and these margin loans come with interest charges, which you have pay for as long as the position is in place.
Why would someone let you short their stock?
If the shares go up in value then the short seller will either have to put more cash into their trading account to keep the bet going or be forced to buy stock at a higher price in order to close out their position.
How do you tell if a stock is being shorted?
For general shorting information about a company's stock, you can usually go to any website with a stock quote service. For more specific short interest info, you would have to go to the stock exchange where the company is listed.
What does shorting Tesla mean?
Shorting a stock means an investor borrows and sells shares they don't own, betting that the price will decline. Tesla, is no stranger to short selling; the company's stock was a very popular short in recent years.
Can you short on Robinhood?
Shorting stocks on Robinhood is not possible at present, even with a Robinhood Gold membership, the premium subscriptions which allows Robinhood investors to use margin for leveraging returns. Instead, you must either use inverse ETFs or put options.
How long can you short a stock?
There is no mandated limit to how long a short position may be held. Short selling involves having a broker who is willing to loan stock with the understanding that they are going to be sold on the open market and replaced at a later date.
What are the most shorted stocks?
Most Shorted StocksSymbol SymbolCompany NameFloat Shorted (%)ICPT ICPTIntercept Pharmaceuticals Inc.37.73%REV REVRevlon Inc. Cl A37.27%NKLA NKLANikola Corp.36.96%HRTX HRTXHeron Therapeutics Inc.36.21%42 more rows
How do short sellers make money?
Short sellers are wagering that the stock they are short selling will drop in price. If the stock does drop after selling, the short seller buys it back at a lower price and returns it to the lender. The difference between the sell price and the buy price is the short seller's profit.
What is shorting a stock for dummies?
Short selling involves borrowing a security and selling it on the open market. You then purchase it later at a lower price, pocketing the difference after repaying the initial loan. For example, let's say a stock is trading at $50 a share. You borrow 100 shares and sell them for $5,000.
What happens when a stock is heavily shorted?
If a stock has a high short interest, short positions may be forced to liquidate and cover their position by purchasing the stock. If a short squeeze occurs and enough short sellers buy back the stock, the price could go even higher.
Can you short a stock you own?
A short sell against the box is the act of short selling securities that you already own, but without closing out the existing long position. This results in a neutral position where all gains in a stock are equal to the losses and net to zero.
A Beginner's Guide for How to Short Stocks
Joshua Kennon is an expert on investing, assets and markets, and retirement planning. He is the managing director and co-founder of Kennon-Green & Co., an asset management firm.
Why Sell Short?
Usually, you would short stock because you believe a stock's price is headed downward. The idea is that if you sell the stock today, you'll be able to buy it back at a lower price in the near future.
How Shorting Stock Works
Usually, when you short stock, you are trading shares that you do not own.
What Are the Risks of Short Selling?
When you short a stock, you expose yourself to a large financial risk.
How Is Short Selling Different From Regular Investing?
Shorting a stock has its own set of rules, which are different from regular stock investing, including a rule designed to restrict short selling from further driving down the price of a stock that has dropped more than 10% in one day, compared to the previous day's closing price. 4
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
In theory, you can short a stock as long as you want. In practice, shorting a stock involves borrowing stocks from your broker, and your broker will likely charge fees until you settle your debt. Therefore, you can short a stock as long as you can afford the costs of borrowing.
What Is Short Selling?
Short selling is an investment or trading strategy that speculates on the decline in a stock or other security's price. It is an advanced strategy that should only be undertaken by experienced traders and investors.
Understanding Short Selling
With short selling, a seller opens a short position by borrowing shares, usually from a broker-dealer, hoping to buy them back for a profit if the price declines. Shares must be borrowed because you can sell shares that do not exist.
Why Sell Short?
The most common reasons for engaging in short selling are speculation and hedging. A speculator is making a pure price bet that it will decline in the future. If they are wrong, they will have to buy the shares back higher, at a loss.
Pros and Cons of Short Selling
Selling short can be costly if the seller guesses wrong about the price movement. A trader who has bought stock can only lose 100% of their outlay if the stock moves to zero.
Additional Considerations with Short Selling
Besides the previously-mentioned risk of losing money on a trade from a stock's price rising, short selling has additional risks that investors should consider.
Costs of Short Selling
Unlike buying and holding stocks or investments, short selling involves significant costs, in addition to the usual trading commissions that have to be paid to brokers. Some of the costs include:
Ideal Conditions for Short Selling
Timing is crucial when it comes to short selling. Stocks typically decline much faster than they advance, and a sizeable gain in a stock may be wiped out in a matter of days or weeks on an earnings miss or other bearish development. The short seller thus has to time the short trade to near perfection.
This method of betting against the stock market can be lucrative but has big risks
Matt is a Certified Financial Planner based in South Carolina who has been writing for The Motley Fool since 2012. Matt specializes in writing about bank stocks, REITs, and personal finance, but he loves any investment at the right price. Follow him on Twitter to keep up with his latest work! Follow @TMFMathGuy
When short-selling makes sense
At first glance, you might think that short-selling would be just as common as owning stock. However, relatively few investors use the short-selling strategy.
The risks of short-selling
Short-selling can be profitable when you make the right call, but it carries greater risks than what ordinary stock investors experience.
Alternative to shorting
As a final thought, an alternative to shorting that limits your downside exposure is to buy a put option on a stock. Essentially, a put option gives you the right, but not the obligation, to sell a stock at a predetermined price (known as the strike price) at any time before the option contract expires.
How Can Short Selling Make Money?
One way to make money on stocks for which the price is falling is called short selling (also known as "going short" or "shorting"). Short selling sounds like a fairly simple concept in theory—an investor borrows a stock, sells the stock, and then buys the stock back to return it to the lender.
Example of a Short Sale
For example, suppose an investor thinks that Meta Platforms, Inc. (FB), formerly Facebook, is overvalued at $325 per share and will decline in price. In that case, the investor could "borrow" 10 shares of Meta from their broker and then sell the shares for the current market price of $325.
What Are the Risks?
Short selling substantially amplifies risk. When an investor buys a stock (or goes long), they stand to lose only the money that they have invested. Thus, if the investor bought one FB share at $325, the maximum they could lose is $325 because the stock cannot drop to less than $0. In other words, the lowest value that any stock can fall to is $0.
Why Do Investors Go Short?
Short selling can serve the purposes of speculation or hedging. Speculators use short selling to capitalize on a potential decline in a specific security or across the market as a whole. Hedgers use the strategy to protect gains or mitigate losses in a security or portfolio.
When Does Short Selling Make Sense?
Short selling is not a strategy many investors use, largely because the expectation is that stocks will rise in value over time. In the long run, the stock market tends to go up, although it is occasionally punctuated by bear markets in which stocks tumble significantly.
Less Risky Alternative to Short Selling
An alternative to short selling that limits your downside exposure is to buy a put option on the same stock. Holding a put option gives the investor the right, but not the obligation, to sell the underlying stock at a stated price, called the strike price.
Costs Associated With Short Selling
Trading commissions are not the only expense involved when short selling. There are other costs, such as:
Technical Trends
Look at a chart of the stock you are thinking about shorting. What is the general trend? Is the stock under accumulation or distribution ?
Estimates Ratcheted Down
When a company misses its quarterly earnings estimates, management will usually try to explain to investors what happened in a conference call or press release. Following this, Wall Street analysts work to compose a report and distribute it to their brokers.
Tax-Loss Selling on the Horizon
In the fourth quarter, you will note that companies trading in the lower end of their 52-week trading range will often trade even lower. This is because individuals and mutual funds want to book some of their losses before year-end to reap the tax benefits.
Insider Selling
There are plenty of reasons why an insider might sell his or her stock. This may include buying a home or simply a desire to book some profits. However, if a number of insiders are selling the stock in large quantities, it may be a wise move to view this as a harbinger of things to come.
Fundamentals Deteriorating
You don't need to find a company that is on the verge of bankruptcy to successfully short its stock. Sometimes you need to see only a mild deterioration in a company's overall fundamentals for big holders of the stock, such as mutual funds, to get fed up and dump the shares.
Declining Sector Trends
While a company will occasionally buck a larger trend, most companies within a given sector or industry trade in relative parity. That means supply and demand issues facing one company are likely to impact others at some point down the road. Use this information to your advantage. Make phone calls to a company's suppliers and/or customers.
The Bottom Line
Investors need to be aware not only that short selling presents an opportunity to generate tangible gains, but also that signals can alert an investor when a stock is about to take a fall. This knowledge will make you an immeasurably better investor.
If you've ever wanted to make money from a company's misfortune, selling stocks short can be a profitable -- though risky -- way to invest
Matt is a Certified Financial Planner based in South Carolina who has been writing for The Motley Fool since 2012. Matt specializes in writing about bank stocks, REITs, and personal finance, but he loves any investment at the right price. Follow him on Twitter to keep up with his latest work! Follow @TMFMathGuy
Why would you short a stock?
Typically, you might decide to short a stock because you feel it is overvalued or will decline for some reason. Since shorting involves borrowing shares of stock you don't own and selling them, a decline in the share price will let you buy back the shares with less money than you originally received when you sold them.
A simple example of a short-selling transaction
Here's how short selling can work in practice: Say you've identified a stock that currently trades at $100 per share. You think that stock is overvalued, and you believe that its price is likely to fall in the near future. Accordingly, you decide that you want to sell 100 shares of the stock short.
What are the risks of shorting a stock?
Keep in mind that the example in the previous section is what happens if the stock does what you think it will -- declines.
Be careful with short selling
Short selling can be a lucrative way to profit if a stock drops in value, but it comes with big risk and should be attempted only by experienced investors. And even then, it should be used sparingly and only after a careful assessment of the risks involved.
How to short a stock: 6 steps
These instructions assume that you have a brokerage account that you can use to buy and sell stocks. If not, here is a guide on how to get one.
What short selling is and how it works
Buying a stock is also known as taking a long position. A long position becomes profitable as the stock price goes up over time, or when the stock pays a dividend.
A simple analogy for understanding short selling
It may be easier to understand short selling by considering the following analogy.
Short selling has several major risks
Short selling is incredibly risky, which is why it isn't recommended for most investors. Even professionals often lose a lot of money when shorting.
Shorting alternatives: other ways to profit from declining prices
There are several other ways to profit from falling prices that are also risky, but not quite as risky as short selling.
Only go short if you truly know what you are doing
At the end of the day, short selling is a very risky trading method that should only be done by sophisticated investors.
What is a Short (or Short Position)
A short, or a short position, is created when a trader sells a security first with the intention of repurchasing it or covering it later at a lower price. A trader may decide to short a security when she believes that the price of that security is likely to decrease in the near future. There are two types of short positions: naked and covered.
Understanding Short Positions
When creating a short position, one must understand that the trader has a finite potential to earn a profit and infinite potential for losses. That is because the potential for a profit is limited to the stock’s distance to zero. However, a stock could potentially rise for years, making a series of higher highs.
A Real World Example
A trader thinks that Amazon’s stock is poised to fall after it reports quarterly results. To take advantage of this possibility, the trader borrows 1,000 shares of the stock from his stock loan department with the intent to short the stock. The trader then goes out and sells short the 1,000 shares for $1,500.
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Why Do People Short-Sell Stocks?
- Why do some investors decide to do this? It's clearly a high-risk situation for them, and even more out of their control than a usual investment. Is it worth it? If they play their cards right, certainly. And what could be more tempting for an experienced investor than the ability to make money of…
Risks of Short-Selling
- There are rewards in short-selling if you get it right. But investors don't always get it right -- and enough of them trying to can have major consequences for an economy. The pros of shorting a stock are all based on the idea that a short-seller's instinct that a stock is about to tank is a sound, logical one that will come true. Despite your best efforts, however, that isn't something that can …
Notable Examples of Short-Selling
- Some economists put part of the blame for the 2008 stock market crash and Great Recessionon all the investors short-selling companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after the housing market collapsed. At its worst, too much short-selling may have contributed to major economic problems. In other instances, it can tell you how investors view a company. One recent example …
When Short-Selling Makes Sense
- At first glance, you might think that short-selling would be just as common as owning stock. However, relatively few investors use the short-selling strategy. One reason for that is general market behavior. Most investors own stocks, funds, and other investments that they want to see rise in value. The stock market can fluctuate dramatically over short time periods, but over the lo…
The Risks of Short-Selling
- Short-selling can be profitable when you make the right call, but it carries greater risks than what ordinary stock investors experience. Specifically, when you short a stock, you have unlimited downside risk but limited profit potential. This is the exact opposite of when you buy a stock, which comes with limited risk of loss but unlimited profit ...
Alternative to Shorting
- As a final thought, an alternative to shorting that limits your downside exposure is to buy a put option on a stock. Essentially, a put optiongives you the right, but not the obligation, to sell a stock at a predetermined price (known as the strike price) at any time before the option contract expires. For example, if you buy a put option in a stock with a strike price of $100 and the stock …
Expert Q&A
- The Motley Fool had a chance to connect with an expert on shorting: Sofia Johan, an associate professor in the finance department of FAU's College of Business. The Motley Fool: What are some common misconceptions about short selling that investors should know? Johan: I think most investors believe the risks to be the same as that of taking long positions. Definitely not th…