short selling

British

noun

finance the practice of selling commodities, securities, currencies, etc that one does not have in the expectation that falling prices will enable one to buy them in at a profit before they have to be delivered

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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short selling

He cheated Vanderbilt with a short selling operation in Erie shares that caused the market overall to fall.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, on Monday appeared to equate all short selling with market manipulation, prompting traders to say that prosecutors misunderstood the activity.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 4, 2026

The technical Wall Street term for investors short selling space stocks right now is “getting your face ripped off.”

From Barron's ● May 27, 2026

Another factor in the recent rise is short selling.

From Barron's ● May 27, 2026

By short selling, we mean selling a stock that you do not possess, with the intention of buying it later.

From Successful Stock Speculation by John James Butler

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023