Short numbers, page-44

Possum,

Unfortunately this is how the market works and has for some time. Short selling, which was initially created to allow profits to be made in the expectation of a company's falling profitability but is now quite often used as a calculated move to profit from temporary weak demand by creating fear, is only one part of the forces at play in the market (a system which itself was initially created to fund the growth of companies and reward investors from the profits that sucess brings). It's certainly quite sad that the situation means that there is money to be made from what has nothing to do with wealth creation, that this creates fear in your average investors who either falls prey to it or simply choses not to participate in the market (thus reducing the pool of money to grow businesses), that it many investors get caught up in the belief that this is how money is to be made on the market but also get taken advantage of by those better equipped to do it, and that it changes the whole system for the worse for companies using the market to grow. Unless you think you are capable of affecting change (like the latest exchange in the U.S. is trying to do against HFT) then all you can do is lump the situation in the class of other fluctuations caused by the market being irrational (and forget that someone is in this case profiting from an artificially created situation). Like the oil craziness, this too will pass.