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Showing posts with the label short selling

What is a hedge fund?

A hedge fund is an investment fund that collects pools capital from accredited and institutional investors and invest in securities or other type of investments with a goal to generate high returns. What makes them different from mutual funds besides type of investors and diversity of investments is that they are less regulated and have more freedom when utilizing  investing strategies that carry greater risk and potential for loss. Reason why it is available to wealthy investors is their knowledge and understanding of risks involved and ability to afford higher fees and potential loses. This means they can use short selling and other speculative activities unlike mutual funds. To be considered accredited investor individual must have a net worth of $1,000,000 at least or annual income of at least $200,000. Term accredited investor is defined in Rule 501 of Regulation D of Securities and Exchange Commission. Even though hedge funds are not subject to some regulation that...

What is short selling?

Simple definition of short selling  is the sale of an asset that the seller has borrowed in order to profit later from  fall in the price of the asset. In other words trader sells securities at one price and buys it back at a lower price making gain in the price difference. in this article we are referring to stock although you ca short any instrument or asset, bonds, commodities, currencies, etc. There is usually certain amount of speculation that causes traders to short sell or the need to protect oneself against loss on investment by balancing transaction. Basically there are two basic types of investors, buy-and-hold investors and  day traders. The first hold their portfolio stocks for the long term expecting to see significant rise in price over time which will result in gains. Other category of investors trade on the short term basis. Unlike investors that go long and wait for stock price to build up traders buy stock that will possibly fall in price....