Short Selling History

Some theories hold that the practice was invented in 1609 by Dutch trader Isaac Le Maire, a big shareholder of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC). In 1602, he invested about 85,000 guilders in the VOC. By 1609, the VOC still was not paying dividend, and Le Maire's ships on the Baltic routes were under constant threats of attack by English ships due to trading conflicts between the British and the VOC. Le Maire decided to sell his shares and sold even more than he had. The notables spoke of an outrageous act and this led to the first real stock exchange regulations: a ban on short selling. The ban was revoked a couple of years later.

Short selling has been a target of ire since at least the eighteenth century when England banned it outright. It was perceived as a magnifying effect in the violent downturn in the Dutch tulip market in the seventeenth century. In another well-referenced example, George Soros became notorious for "breaking the Bank of England" on Black Wednesday of 1992, when he sold short more than $10 billion worth of pounds sterling.

The term "short" was in use from at least the mid-nineteenth century. It is commonly understood that "short" is used because the short seller is in a deficit position with his brokerage house. Jacob Little was known as The Great Bear of Wall Street who began shorting stocks in the United States in 1822.

Short sellers were blamed for the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Regulations governing short selling were implemented in the United States in 1929 and in 1940. Political fallout from the 1929 crash led Congress to enact a law banning short sellers from selling shares during a downtick; this was known as the uptick rule, and this was in effect until July 3, 2007 when it was removed by the SEC (SEC Release No. 34-55970). President Herbert Hoover condemned short sellers and even J. Edgar Hoover said he would investigate short sellers for their role in prolonging the Depression. Legislation introduced in 1940 banned mutual funds from short selling (this law was lifted in 1997). A few years later, in 1949, Alfred Winslow Jones founded a fund (that was unregulated) that bought stocks while selling other stocks short, hence hedging some of the market risk, and the hedge fund was born.

Some typical examples of mass short-selling activity are during "bubbles", such as the Dot-com bubble. At such periods, short-sellers sell hoping for a market correction. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announcements approving a drug often cause the market to react irrationally due to media attention; short sellers use the opportunity to sell into the buying frenzy and wait for the exaggerated reaction to subside before covering their position. Negative news, such as litigation against a company, will also entice professional traders to sell the stock short.

During the Dot-com bubble, shorting a start-up company could backfire since it could be taken over at a higher price than what speculators shorted. Short-sellers were forced to cover their positions at acquisition prices, while in many cases the firm often overpaid for the start-up.

Short selling restrictions in 2008

In September 2008 short selling was seen as a contributing factor to undesirable market volatility and subsequently was prohibited by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for 799 financial companies for three weeks in an effort to stabilize those companies. At the same time the U.K. Financial Services Authority (FSA) prohibited short selling for 32 financial companies. On September 22, Australia enacted even more extensive measures with a total ban of short selling. Also on September 22, the Spanish market regulator, CNMV, required investors to notify it of any short positions in financial institutions, if they exceed 0.25% of a company's share capital. Naked shorting was also restricted.

In an interview with the Washington Post in late December 2008, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox said the decision to impose a three-week ban on short selling of financial company stocks was taken reluctantly, but that the view at the time, including from Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke, was that "if we did not act and act at that instant, these financial institutions could fail as a result and there would be nothing left to save." Later he changed his mind and thought the ban unproductive. In a December 2008 interview with Reuters, he explained that the SEC's Office of Economic Analysis was still evaluating data from the temporary ban, and that preliminary findings point to several unintended market consequences and side effects. "While the actual effects of this temporary action will not be fully understood for many more months, if not years," he said, "knowing what we know now, I believe on balance the Commission would not do it again.”

Short Selling History Topic - Short Selling

In finance, short selling (also known as shorting or going short) is the practice of selling assets, usually securities, that have been borrowed from a third party (usually a broker) with the intention of buying identical assets back at a later date to return to the lender.