Seriously, why bother with shorts for ASX stocks. Absolute...

Seriously, why bother with shorts for ASX stocks.

Absolute maximum return is 100% if everything goes "right", less the transaction fees, borrow cost and any dividends, and if a company delists before you buy it back it's an absolute nightmare. Then you're almost certainly getting taxed as a short-term capital gain, so you're losing up to 50% of that to the tax man.

Absolute maximum loss is infinite, and you possibly can't offset that against income, so you're reliant on a current or future capital gain to get tax relief.

Even the professional investors are getting wearisome of shorting equities as a method of adding value, go take at look at some of the Bronte Capital comments recently on it. They're now looking at going short the debt of companies instead - brings the maximum loss a lot lower.