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In fall, 2008, the US banned short
selling of certain stocks. It triggered a massive short-covering rally.
Then, without the shorts in the market, prices went into freefall.
When prices are falling, the shorts (when taking profits) are the only
bidders. Markets don't crash because of short sellers. They crash
because the bid is withdrawn.
Every time governments have tried to
manipulate markets and impede price discovery, it's always had the same
disastrous result. And yet today, several European countries have
announced bans on short selling.
My prediction is that, after a possible
massive short covering rally and possibly piling-on by momentum chasers,
whatever securities are not shortable will collapse. One reason for
this is that a ban on short selling tells would-be buyers that there is
something wrong. And they should withdraw their bids. Then
gravity will take over, as first one seller needs to sell "at the
market" (i.e. on the bid) and there is no real bid.
I wrote the following in response to a
friend's Facebook post.
First, contrary to popular
misconception, the purpose of the stock market is not to go up,
ratcheting higher and never lower. Its purpose
is price discovery. This is because it allocates capital, and just as it
is important to allocate more capital to the most productive
enterprises, it is equally important to deprive the least
productive enterprises of more capital (which they are destroying).
Short selling
is a key part of this process.
Second, unlike long buying, short
selling tends to be done by more sophisticated investors. With long
buying, there is a limit on one's
potential loss but no limit on the possible gain. Short sellers face the
opposite: a limited gain and unlimited losses. This tends to make
them more careful, more selective, and to hold positions for
much shorter periods of time.
Third, short sellers keep everyone else
honest. When people can act free from negative consequences or downside,
they tend to become more
and more aggressive and take risks. Imagine if I said go into
the casino, and if you win keep it. But if you lose, I will pay you
back.
This is also called "moral hazard". Greed is one of the two
motivators for market participants. People want to make lots of money.
Fear is
the check on it. People really want to avoid losses. Short sellers
can inflict losses when people become overly, irrationally greedy.
Fourth, short sellers will tend to
dampen volatility. The higher a price goes above its fundamentals, the
more short sellers will be
attracted to come in to the market. Perhaps more dramatically, when
a market is plunging, short sellers may be the only bid in the market.
Consider how a real market works. Forget "the price" of something.
There are always two prices: the bid and the ask (offer). The bid and
the offer are made by different people, motivated by different forces.
And there are asymmetries. Since money is the most liquid, most
trusted thing in the system, it's never bad to sell an asset and
get cash. So there is never a case when the offer is withdrawn. But the
bid is a whole different story. The bid is withdrawn under crisis
or stress. This causes a market to plunge, and thus more bids are
withdrawn. Short sellers, on the other hand, have a natural tendency to
want to take profits. And thus buy back the shares they shorted. And
thus put in a bid.
Fifth, markets are driven by arbitrage.
If the price of copper goes down, an arbitrager can put on the following
trades simultaneously:
buy copper (long) and short a copper mining company. If two similarly situated
companies are trading at a stable ratio of share prices, and
one's price suddenly starts to collapse (assuming that it's not
caused by anything real) the arbitrager can buy the fallen shares and
short
the shares of the other to bring the spread back to normal. There
are endless examples of arbitrage, which involve at least one short
"leg".
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