What Is Short Selling – How to Profit When a Security
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What is Short Selling – How to Profit when a Security Falls Let me first congratulate you on taking your trading game to the next level by researching how to short sell. In this article, I am going to give you a brief overview of short selling, strategies for short-selling and most importantly the personality type or mindset best suited for shorting. Before we go into these topics at length let’s first dive into how to short a stock. How to Short a Stock The topic of short selling was confusing for me when I first started out in trading. I understood I would make money when the stock went lower. But I still had questions like “where did the money go?” and “can the brokerage firm lose money on the trade?” were beyond me. So, let me break the process of shorting down into a few steps: 1. First identify a stock you believe is headed lower. 2. Enter the stock symbol in your order entry form of your trading platform and select sell. 3. Enter the amount of shares you would like to short and at what price. 4. Your broker will allow you to borrow the shares to sell; key word is borrowing. 5. You then receive cash for the proceeds of the sell. Now this is not like cash in hand that you can use to buy other goods and services. It is more of an accounting ledger item showing you have sold x amount of stock at a set price. This net value of number of shares multiplied by the price is your break-even point 6. When you are ready to close your position, you enter a buy order for the shares you have shorted, thus returning the shares. 7. If the stock has loss value, then you are returning less money than you borrowed and hence turning a profit. If, however the stock has increased in value, you will owe more than you borrowed and will take a loss. Lastly, you need to deduct interest paid to your broker when calculating profitability on the trade. Before we move, let me address one question, “can brokers lose money on short sales?”. The answer is no. The broker is acting as a lender. Your broker just wants to control a certain number of shares and makes profits based on the interest they can charge for the shares outstanding to traders. So, what happens if a stock rises significantly and you cannot cover the balance? Well you my friend now owe your brokerage firm the difference and will need to work out a payment arrangement. History of Short Selling Short selling has been around since the 1600s and likely was invented by Dutch businessman Isaac Le Maire. Le Maire at one point worked for the Dutch East India Company and was removed from the company. In order to seek his revenge and make a profit, he decided he would short the stock. Why short Dutch East India Company – sit was literally the only stock trading at the time. Le Maire went further than just shorting the stock, he began to spread rumors that ships were sinking. Unlike today where you get real-time updates, these ships were out at sea for many months with no way of communicating back to the mainland. So, as Le Maire planned, the stock of Dutch East India Company began to drop. Well the Dutch government stepped in and put a partial ban on short selling and Le Maire was not able to access his shares – hence losing his entire fortune. This is where shorting all started. As the financial industry has progressed over the years short selling is now available on most securities (futures, stocks, etc.) and on all major global exchanges. To learn more about the history of short selling check out this awesome Wikipedia page Are Short Sellers Evil? Short Seller – Evil People This is a matter of public opinion. There are people that feel short selling is unpatriotic as you are betting against the demise or at least the short-term setback of a company. Therefore, if you are for shorting then you are for hurting the economy. I can honestly see it on both sides. Longs are not complaining when short sellers are stepping over one another to buy back their shares, which leads to some of the best short-term rallies you will see in the market. But if the economy is in the tank, should short sellers further exasperate an already dire situation by applying more downward pressure on the markets? The answer is somewhere in the middle. Which is why we have the Government that will step in when the economy is in bad shape and apply partial bans of shorting the same way the Dutch Government did in the 1600s. For those of you with short-term memory as recently as 2008 many world Governments instituted partial shorting bans during the housing crisis to reduce the risk of a global collapse. Check out this study from Princeton that evaluated the effectiveness of the short selling ban. I will say to categorize short selling as evil or unpatriotic is likely going too far. Remember, everyone short selling is not looking to crush a company, there are traders that take on short positions as a hedge against their long positions. Also, short selling provides liquidity to the market with traders that need to buy back shares to close open positions. What if we began to turn the conversation on itself and began to think of short sellers as heroes or the police of the stock market sifting through and exposing worthless companies. That’s how the pure short sellers view themselves. They are not evil villains but rather the people brave enough to expose companies practicing illegal behavior or inflating their value. These short sellers feel they do the economy a service by exposing these companies and weeding them out of our financial system, ultimately protecting would be investors. What are the Best Times to Short Sell Trading Times Swing Trading For swing traders and long-term investors, you will want to focus on shorting when a stock is below their 200-day moving average. The 200-day moving average is the industry standard for assessing hen a stock is in a bullish or bearish trend. You should wait for reactions where the stock experiences a bounce back to the 200-day moving average to add to a short position. You can try shorting as a stock is making a new low, but this is often when smart money will run stops only to turn the stock around and go higher. The last thing you want to do is enter a stock right as a squeeze is beginning to take off. Day Trading For day traders in the US, the best time to short stocks is between 10am and 10:30am. From what I have observed from looking at thousands of charts is the high set by 10 to 10:30 am is often the high of the day and if that price is breached later in the day, it’s likely a bull trap. I have personally placed over 1,000 trades in Tradingsim to test this theory out. From those tests I would say over 70% of trades where you short the morning pop will return a profit. So, if you plan on trading morning breakouts, it’s best you get them earlier in the morning. The further you march towards 10:30 and beyond, the lower the success rate for long opportunities on breakouts. Short Selling Example Building upon the topic of the best times to sell a stock short, below are a few working examples for both swing traders and day traders. Swing Trading – Short Selling Examples Short Selling Daily Charts Short Selling Daily Charts 2 As you can see it’s best to identify stocks that are in strong multi-month downtrends. This way you do not have to focus on being a stock picker; rather you just need to ride the wave. Day Trading – Short Selling Examples Short Selling Example 2 Short Selling Example 3 I’m telling you from experience, these topping patterns in the morning occur all time! The last chart I am displaying where the stock makes a new daily high may occur 20% of the time. But even when these new highs occur, they often only last a few minutes before the stock rolls over. Now shorting stocks as they rally up is not without risks. As you can see you may not get a free fall down; at some point the stock will find support. Therefore, you need to catch the run up and as things are hitting a feverish pitch, take a short position. Do not get greedy; remember you are going counter to the primary trend. Who are the Greatest Short Sellers of All-Time? Over the years there have been some star short traders that have made a name for themselves. It’s likely their courage to go against the entire market and somehow win which makes them so popular. Jacob Little (Early 1800s) Jacob was one of the first real speculators in the US that profited from short selling and cornering markets to then create a short squeeze. Over the course of his career Jacob made many millions but died penniless after himself being cornered. Jesse Livermore (Early 1900s) Jesse Livermore For any new traders starting out there is something about Jesse that makes him a crowd favorite.