short selling

5 synonyms and 3 antonyms for short selling, grouped by meaning and by how common each one is.

Noun — The practice of selling shares or other assets that you have borrowed rather than own, with the intention of buying them back later and returning them; the seller gains if the price has fallen in between and loses if it has risen.

Synonyms

Everyday swaps

Common words most readers know — safe in any writing.

short

Rare, literary or technical

Precise, but they will stand out — check the sense before using one.

shorting going short short sale sell short

Synonyms by Meaning

1. noun

The practice of selling shares or other assets that you have borrowed rather than own, with the intention of buying them back later and returning them; the seller gains if the price has fallen in between and loses if it has risen.

“The fund made its name through short selling of companies it believed were overvalued.”

shorting going short short sale

Opposites

going long long investing

2. verb

To carry out such a sale. Used as short-sell, and commonly shortened to short.

“He short-sold the stock two weeks before the results came out.”

short sell short

Opposites

go long

How to use short selling

The word patterns that sound natural to a native speaker.

short-selling ban heavily shorted close a short position short interest

Standard financial terminology. The verb short is informal in general speech but entirely normal inside the industry.

Etymology

From the trading sense of short, meaning to owe something you do not currently hold, plus selling.

Full origin of short selling →

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between short selling and going long?

Going long is the ordinary case: you buy something, own it, and gain if its price rises. Short selling reverses the order, because you sell first and buy back afterwards, so you gain if the price has fallen. The risks are not mirror images: a long position can only fall to zero, while a price that keeps rising means a short seller owes more and more.

How can someone sell something they do not own?

They borrow it. The short seller arranges to borrow the shares from an existing holder, usually through a broker and for a fee, sells those borrowed shares on the market, and later buys equivalent shares to hand back. What they keep or lose is the difference between the two prices, minus the borrowing costs.

What is a short squeeze?

It is what happens when the price of a heavily shorted asset rises sharply and short sellers rush to buy it back to limit their losses. Their buying pushes the price up further, which forces still more of them to buy, and the effect feeds on itself.

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