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Finance Dictionary and Glossary of Investment Terms
Short sale
Definition 1.
Selling a security that the seller does not own but is committed to repurchasing eventually. It is used to capitalize on an expected decline in the security's price.
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Definition 2.
Borrowing a security (or commodity futures contract) from a broker and selling it, with the understanding that it must later be bought back (hopefully at a lower price) and returned to the broker. Short selling (or "selling short") is a technique used by investors who try to profit from the falling price of a stock. For example, consider an investor who wants to sell short 100 shares of a company, believing it is overpriced and will fall. The investor's broker will borrow the shares from someone who owns them with the promise that the investor will return them later. The investor immediately sells the borrowed shares at the current market price. If the price of the shares drops, he/she "covers the short position" by buying back the shares, and his/her broker returns them to the lender. The profit is the difference between the price at which the stock was sold and the cost to buy it back, minus commissions and expenses for borrowing the stock. But if the price of the shares increase, the potential losses are unlimited. The company’s shares may go up and up, but at some point the investor has to replace the 100 shares he/she sold. In that case, the losses can mount without limit until the short position is covered. For this reason, short selling is a very risky technique. SEC rules allow investors to sell short only on an uptick or a zero-plus tick, to prevent "pool operators" from driving down a stock price through heavy short-selling, then buying the shares for a large profit.
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Definition 3.
See Selling Short
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Definition 4.
The sale of shares of a security that the seller does not own. Such sales are made in anticipation of a decline in the price of the security to enable the seller to cover the sale with a purchase at a later date, at a lower price, and thus at a profit. Securities and Exchange Commission rules allow investors to sell short only when a stock price is moving upward. This prevents "pool operators" from driving down a stock price through heavy short-selling, then buying the shares for a large profit.
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Definition 5.
A market transaction in which an investor sells borrowed securities in anticipation of a price decline.
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