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

“I don’t think this makes short selling illegal, but I don’t think the trial gave us enough to say what it does mean,” Sutter said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 4, 2026

Another factor in the recent rise is short selling.

From Barron's ● May 27, 2026

Software stocks, represented by an ETF, fell 32% from September highs, partly due to short selling amid AI displacement fears.

From Barron's ● Feb. 11, 2026

The practice of short selling has been sanctioned by economists from the first Napoleon's Minister of Finance to Horace White in our day.

From The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion Remarks at Annual Dinner, Association of Stock Exchange Brokers, Held at the Astor Hotel, New York, January 24, 1917 by Kahn, Otto Hermann

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