Shorting is the act of investing in stocks in a way that allows you to profit when stock prices fall. It is the opposite of going long, which is investing in a way that allows you to profit when stock prices rise. 

I’ve been investing for nearly a decade now and have done fairly well. But I’ve never shorted stocks. That’s because I recognise that shorting requires different skills from going long. In the financial markets, I only want to do things that I’m sure I know well. In this article, I want to share two real-life examples on why it’s so difficult to short stocks.

The first example starts with an informal investment club I belong to named Kairos Research. It was founded by Stanley Lim, Cheong Mun Hong, and Willie Keng. They are also the founders of the excellent Asia-focused investment education website, Value Invest