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Comment by cultus | Hacker News Reader

Why is there this attitude that short positions are somehow less moral than long positions? I really don't get it.

I think it's because short sellers are seen as pessimists -- on some level, you're betting for a business to fail (or perform poorly), and regardless of whether or not you're right, that means you're betting on people losing jobs, dreams going up in smoke, etc. etc.

I don't subscribe to this narrative, but it's an easy one to spin when your stock is the one being short sold.

It's not inherent to the shirt position but some short sellers definitely influence media.

Because, to simplify, shorts are hoping for people to fail, while longs are hoping for people to succeed.

What both shorts and longs are hoping for are profits on their investment. I doubt either really cares about businesses/people succeeding or failing.

If you promise a bunch of long holders that a particular short trade is guaranteed to make profit, would they not take it out of concern for people?

Because sometimes the shorts do some shady things.. https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/elon-musk-vs-short-s...

People holding long positions do shady stuff all the time as well. I don't see the distinction.

Please share some examples. I'd like to understand so I can compare to the things in that link.

Theranos comes to mind

Theranos was a shady company. But it wasn't a public company. The shadiness was the company itself.

Were the people being shady not also stock holders doing shady things to keep the stock price up?

I think there is a difference in the company itself being shady and investors being shady to influence the stock price. The long pump and dumpers definitely fall into the latter category and similar to the shorts described in my link.

Enron? Years of blatant fraud and earnings manipulation with the explicit goal of hitting stock price targets.

Was that the company itself or were there outsiders contributing to this too?

Pump-and-dumps are an entire class of fraud that fundamentally relies on you being long.

This is totally right and just as shady

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