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I am highly suspicious when firms like these say stuff like this. Like, the conflict of interest is insane.

But, is it that they have a lot of short positions and want to influence the markets?

It is hard to fathom they doing it out of anything but self-interest and stock price.

Perhaps the self-interest in this case is "managing expectations".

If they tell everybody to prepare for a 20 percent drop but the market falls 10 percent, then everybody feels good about themselves and Blackrock.

If they tell people to expect flat markets but instead get the same 10 percent drop, then people panic. They withdraw their money. Move to a new broker. Because obviously Blackrock wasn't prepared for this. Or stuff it in a mattress. Because obviously something unexpectedly bad is happening.

It would be very difficult for blackrock to be net short on anything other than very specific companies. They own significant percentages of all major companies. To go from that to a global net short position would be very difficult without crashing the market outright

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