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Online Share Trading

Engage and learn about markets and trading online

Going 'short'

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BilboBaggins
Contributor
Hi can anyone help - how do I 'Short' an ordinary share..?
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5 REPLIES 5
Not applicable
You can use a single-stock future (SSF). SSFs are available for most of the larger, more liquid shares. The SSF tutorial on this site should tell you all you need to know about trading them. Be very careful when going short!
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Vano
Regular Contributor
Bilbo, Your question indicates that you are short on experience. Pun intended, no offense intended. I advise you to refrain from shorting stocks until you are certain that you understand all the risks. Going short involves much higher risk than when buying vanilla stocks. omo.
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Cherry
Regular Contributor
Bilbo, you can't go short on "ordinary" shares. Only on "underlying" shares which are SSF's.
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BRE
Regular Contributor
Bilbo, going short on a stock means selling them. Whith ordinary stocks, you can't sell what you don't own. You can short them by buying a put warrant or a short SSF contract with the stock as the 'undelying', but both have greater risks.
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BilboBaggins
Contributor
Hi thanks for the help, although being 'short' on experience as you correctly suggest (we all have to start somewhere :-), I have read up a fair amount and certainly from the US literature - you can short a share as easily as you can buy one - without going the derivatives route...is that not the case here?
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