The Short, The Index, And The Private Markets
CFA Institute Contributors, 25 April 2021
The GameStop story returned short-sellers to the front pages of the global financial press. The Reddit crowd’s “Main Street Takes Revenge on Wall Street” narrative cast these short sellers as the villains of the financial markets. It also created enough consensus buying pressure to squeeze their positions into margin calls and realized losses.
But my focus here is not the GameStop story. Rather, it is the necessity of both short positions and representative, investable benchmarks for private market investments. Continue reading “Article: The Short, The Index, And The Private Markets”
CONSIDER this hypothetical scenario: In an effort to pump up the price of his holdings in a loss-making distributor of electronic games, Steve Wong logs on to several investor chat rooms on the Internet to start rumours that the company is about to expand its distribution network to untapped overseas markets, in anticipation of tie-ups with big local champions in their respective domestic markets. 