Well, I agree with you on all counts and your farming example is an excellent explanation of the risks involved with farming. Your logic also applies to other commodity production such as mining. But I think I may have hit a nerve. It was not my intention to go into a long explanation of commodities and how they're traded but they are significantly different to shares. Suffice to say, in the commodities market there are more people involved than miners, farmers, producers and the like. I don't know the percentage but most participants in the commodities market take positions but never take possession of the goods and never intend to take possession. What do you (politely) call these people? Whatever words are used there are more valid reasons why there are other participants in the commodities market prepared to sell product they don't have compared to the share market. Its far easier to mount an argument on the validity of selling product you don't have in commodities than it is in the share market. None of this is intended to support the validity, or not, of short selling but its important to know how the market works and its obvious that you do with your explanation.
Happy to discuss this further at Poochera but it will be my last post on this subject
ADN Price at posting:
22.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)