Wednesday, February 03, 2021

It's Not About Whether There's Anything "Wrong" with Shorting

"Short Sellers Are Heroes," John Tamny tells us at the American Institute for Economic Research.

"There's Nothing Wrong with Short Selling," writes Gary Galles at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

"There is nothing wrong with betting against a company," says Kel Kelly at the Foundation for Economic Education, "if one deems it to be an inferior competitor that will not survive."

And hey, maybe all of them are absolutely correct.

But that's not really the question that's up in the air at the moment.

The question on everyone's minds is whether brokerages like Robinhood should screw their customers, or whether politicians and regulators should intervene with trading restrictions (or maybe even direct bailouts), to save the short-sellers' "heroic" asses when their betting goes south on them and said asses end up in a crack.

And the answer to that is question is a big fat "no."

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