Short-sellers are struggling despite a bad year for stocks
Why the odds are stacked against those who bet against the market
To napoleon, they were “treasonous”; to Tom Farley, a former boss of the New York Stock Exchange, “icky and un-American”. Short-sellers, who bet against the stockmarket, have always been unpopular—and essential. Today’s big names rose to fame by exposing corporate wrongdoing and irrational exuberance. Michael Lewis’s “The Big Short”, a popular account of the global financial crisis of 2007-09, puts the “misfits, renegades and visionaries” who bet against overvalued mortgage-backed debt at the centre of the story.
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Shorts, squeezed”
Finance & economics August 13th 2022
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