[Kalija]

Friends of Bill no doubt

[Bayard]

Soros probably made billions.

[HighSierra5]

And those Senators.

[spintreebob]

For the entire Trump years, and most of the history of the market, the stock market has been volatile. The current volatility is just an extreme example of other volatilities.

Remember how Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The media predicted WWIII. The pessimists sold. The optimists bought.

Many fortunes are made off volatility.The same is true in real estate as in the stock market. Atlanta has had a booming real estate market. Recent events have caused a small dip in that market.

Vultures have entered the Atlanta Real Estate market to make a killing. House Flippers already in place and optimistic about flipping in a volatile market are doing quite well.

[SanchoP]

[ConservativeInPA]

I want to remind everybody before you jump on shorting is evil and evil people do it, that you too can short. Just like anyone can be in the stock market, but people (not on FR) complain about rich people in the stock market. Then there are complaints about banks, and rich bankers. Well go out and own a bank, buy stock in one.

Shorting is a valuable investment tool. It allows one to manage his portfolio and provide insurance for positions. It can cover positions and be used very conservatively. Shorting also has a side affect of providing liquidity to a market. All those lemmings wanting to sell the past couple of weeks, they are thanking God for shorters, because when you short, you buy to close out your position, and you do it when the price has gone down.

[McGruff]

This shouldn’t be able to happen to our nation’s economy.

[wildbill]

Short sellers also lose when unexpected events occur. I trade currencies on the fX market and had a lot of short trades on various British Pound currency pairs. I expected the Brits to screw up as usual but when the momentous day occurred, they scheduled an election and the Pound rallied up 2000 points before I could get out of my trades.

Then this month my favorite currency, the US dollar took another bath because of the Corona crash before rallying
In both cases I risked a lot and lost a lot more in real dollars intended for my mother’s nursing home and my retirement.

I’m not asking for sympathy, but short sellers take a risk as well, based on their best estimate of the economic conditions at the time of the trade and can get caught because of events that capriciously occur.

Seems like no one realizes that a short seller is just taking the other side of a long trade. One trade can’t exist without the other side. Neither side is morally bankrupt-—only financially bankrupt. :-)