JamesYou do understand that to legally short sell you have to...

James

You do understand that to legally short sell you have to have borrowed the shares first right? Short sellers don't, legally anyway, just keep selling stock. They pay someone to borrow the stock, then sell it on to the market. Generally they will buy it back at a later time however if they don't buy it back, contractually all they have done is buy it off someone and sell it on market.

It is hardly stealing and as previously written it assists the market with price discovery. This of course is quite different to short selling whilst creating rumours etc. That is market manipulation however isolated short selling is beneficial. Unless you (or the company) are over leveraged in the medium term the short sellers really won't have any impact on your share price anyway if you have a well run company.

When a stock fails people always seem to blame short sellers as opposed to looking at the performance of the company.

I am the Iceman!