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Course: Finance and capital markets > Unit 6
Lesson 2: Shorting stockShorting stock
What does it mean to short a stock? Created by Sal Khan.
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If you are short, and the company gives out dividend, would you still get the dividend?(21 votes)
You sold the stock, therefore you don't get a dividend. The new owner gets the dividend. You do still owe the dividend to the original owner.(5 votes)
At3:24, when the broker is lending Sal the share, how much does Sal pay in rent? What is a typical interest rate on borrowing shares? And is there ever a time limit on returning owed shares? Thanks.(24 votes)
The rent which Sal owes to the broker is known as "Short Rebate Rate". It is basically the % of the total value of share which is borrowed. In general, they will be 0.1% less than Overnight Interest rates which the Central or Federal bank issues loans to other Depositories or Banking institutions on an overnight basis.
Reserve Bank.
Eg. Value of IBM share (as mentioned in the video) = $100
Interbank (for 30 days) 0.15% - so will be 0.14% for the period.(3 votes)
What I'm having trouble understanding is how 2 people can own the same stock simultaneously and get all it's benefits. I understand when the person shorting the stock sells the stock to someone else, they'll have to pay the original holder dividends when applicable, but when the shorter sold the stock (with it's voting rights & dividend) to someone else, the shorter cannot pay everything back to the person they borrowed from. 2 people cannot simultaneously have voting rights on the same stock.(15 votes)
Well, you may have a surprise coming to you, because when you ask your broker about that, he may tell you that they already are lending out your shares and they are keeping the money! It depends on what sort of agreement you signed in opening your account. In some brokerage accounts, the account holder basically agrees to the lending, and maybe that was just part of the deal for the discount brokerage account you opened.
Most real securities lending is done by large institutional shareholders, who may choose to make their holdings available for borrowing in exchange for a cut of the fee (the broker also takes a cut).
Check with your broker to ask her what the story is with your account.(6 votes)
I understand how I'd need to cover the dividend if I borrowed someone's stock to short it, but what about the less tangible benefits of ownership? Am I obligated to make sure they get a copy of the annual report so that they really "never notice" that they don't actually own the stock? What would happen if they wanted to vote at a shareholder meeting?(12 votes)- What happens if the company goes bankrupt? Does that mean they don't have to give back anything to the broker?(5 votes)
What happens if a business goes bankrupt while a short is open?(2 votes)- Then the short seller makes a lot of money, but he still has to return the shares - which will not be difficult.(7 votes)
What is time limit for return back of those borrowed stocks? Like I can borrow in $100 and suddenly it goes up to $150 but I hold on for 1 months and then it goes to $30, so is there time limit, if yes who determines it and what if company goes bankrupt on this transition process i.e. when I borrowed share and holding it which is not mine but also when the shareholder are not promised money back?(2 votes)
Suppose i do an analysis that the stock price will fall, and i ask my broker to shorten. He provides me stock from other people, but that people also think that the price will fall so they say to the broker to sell all the actions... What would the broker do in that case? Once he gives the stock to a person to shorten can he ask it back?(2 votes)- (1)Does the borrowing cost of shares for short selling vary with company/broker?? (2)And is there any date prior to which shares has to be returned back to the broker and (3)if dividend also has to be payed, is it calculated for the total length of shares holding period or annually?(1 vote)
What if the owner of the stock wants it back before you can get it back? Do you pay them for how much they lost, do you buy the stock back, or is there some other condition that applies?(2 votes)
3:24Video transcript
You've probably heard the term
short sale, and have at least a general-- oh, what
did I do with that? Oh there it is, I scrolled
down-- you probably have a general idea that it means, to
some degree, making a bet that a stock will fall. And there's been a lot of news
lately that maybe short sellers are to blame for a lot
of the stock market crashes, or what's happening
with banks. So I thought it would be
worthwhile to at least explain what a short sale is. And then we could talk a little
bit about whether they're positive or negative,
or they could be both. So you are right if you think
that a short sale is some type of a bet that a stock
can go down. But how does it work? So let's say that, I don't know,
IBM-- and I don't know where IBM is trading right now--
but let's say IBM is right now-- the last
trade was at $100. And I'm convinced. I've done my research, I've done
my analysis, and I'm just convinced that the stock price
of IBM is going to fall. I think IBM is going to have a
horrible quarter next quarter. That some other competitor
is going to take their business, whatever. I'm convinced it's going
to fall to $50. This is what I think. I think it's going to fall
to $50, based on my deep stock analysis. And so, the general idea is that
I should-- well I won't make any value judgment right
now-- but I want to know if there's a way that I can make
money off of my deep analysis. And the way I do that is I go
to my brokerage-- so let me draw some diagrams. So this is
my brokerage, this is my broker, and this is
me right here. This is me. I have a top hat. Anyway, so I go to the broker
and I say broker, I would like to short IBM. I would like-- let's just say
for simplicity I want to short one share of IBM. So what I do is I go to the
broker, and I say broker, can I borrow a share of IBM? And this is a little unintuitive
the first time people learn about it. It was a little unintuitive
for me the first time I learned about the notion
of borrowing a share. But you can also view it
as renting a share. And you might say well,
where's the broker getting it from? Well this broker's got
a ton of clients. Let me draw some of them. His eyes were strange. OK, so this broker has
a ton of clients, many of whom own IBM. And they keep their shares
of IBM with the broker. So the broker always has-- let's
say each of these is a share of IBM. And these guys are all
owners of IBM. And if ever, one day, this guy
wanted to sell his share of IBM, the broker would go out
there, sell it in the market, or maybe this guy
would sell it, depending on how it's done. And then this would be replaced
with the money, and this would then become
$100, right? And then if IBM issues a
dividend, if it says OK, all of our shareholders will get
$5.00 from a company. And then each of these
guys would get $5.00. So they're all just shareholders
in the company. And also, just so you know, as
opposed to being short the company, they're long. When you go long [? on a ?] security, you're buying
the security. When you go short, as you'll
see, you're borrowing the security and selling it. So let's see how that works. So once again I go to my broker
and I say broker, I want to borrow a share of IBM. And the broker says OK, well
I've got all these share sitting around here. And they're really not
doing anything. I'll lend you this share
right there. And stick it in my account. And I'm going to have to pay
rent to borrow that share. You can kind of view it as
either interest on borrowing the share, or you can
view it as rent. Rent is sometimes
more intuitive. Because whenever we talk about
when you rent someone's apartment, you're really kind of
borrowing their apartment. Then you can kind of view
the rent as the interest on the apartment. Or the other way to view it,
when you borrow money, the interest is kind of
rent on the money. Anyway, I think you
get the idea. But I'll borrow this. And you'll say hey wait, Sal,
that doesn't make sense. How can you just borrow
this guy's stock? I mean, this guy might want
to sell it the next day. And that's a good question. If this guy wants to-- let's say
I borrow his stock, it's not sitting there anymore. If this guy wants to sell his
stock the second after I borrow it, the broker is just
going to take-- he's just going to shuffle around the
stocks a little bit. I mean, you know stocks are--
they call it fungible, you can replace one stock certificate
with the other. They're no different. So then he'll say OK,
I'll just give this stock to this guy. Whoops. I just messed up with my pen. I'll just give this stock to the
guy who wants to sell it, and then you would
have essentially borrowed from this guy. And you could keep rearranging
the securities so that none of these guys ever know that
their stock is borrowed. Although you have to give
permission, especially if these guys own the
stock outright. They have to give permission to
let the stock be borrowed, and they benefit, because they
get some cut, hopefully, they get some cut of the rent, or the
interest that I'm paying. So it's beneficial to them. And the broker can never, well
it should never, really, lend out all of the shares here. Just so that it can keep
shuffling around. And we'll talk about what
happens if you actually try to do this with a share that
you've never borrowed. We'll do that in
a future thing. But the general idea is, you
borrow one of these shares out here, and then the broker can
kind of keep shuffling around these shares, if any of these
guys really want to get rid of their share. And let's say I've borrowed
this guy's. Let's say I originally borrowed
this guy's share. This guy wanted to
sell his share. So what the broker does is, he
takes this share, gives it to him, and now I have officially
borrowed this guy's share. Right? This is the share I'm borrowing
now because this one's been sold. Now, what happens if IBM
issues a dividend? It says every one of our
shareholders should get $5.00. Well this guy's expecting
a $5.00 check. Or he expects $5.00
to be deposited in his brokerage account. For that to happen, I
essentially have to write this guy the $5.00 check. So I have to make it look, or
at least the broker is going to force me to make it
look like this guy still owns the share. So anything that this guy gets
by being a shareholder of this stock, I have to provide
for him. Anyway, so I've borrowed
the stock. Now what do I do with it? My whole thesis here is that IBM
is going to $50, so how do I make money off of that? So I [? set ?] [? this ?] trading right now at $100. I've borrowed this share. So I sell it. So let's see, the first thing is
I borrow one share, as I've done there. And now I sell it
on the market. And we said it's selling
for $100. I sell it for $100. So I sell it to the market. Let's say the market is
out here to the left. So I sell to the market,
and I get $100. So let's see what's happening
right now. What's my current state
of affairs? Let's say assets-- and I'll talk
about margin requirements later-- liabilities. What do I have, what do I owe? So now I have $100. And what do I owe? I owe one share of IBM. Let's say my analysis ends
up being correct, often times it won't. And we'll talk a little bit more
about why short selling can be extremely risky. But let's say my analysis is
correct, and a couple of days later IBM starts
trading at $50. What I can do now is unwind my
trade, or cover my short. And the way I do this, is
I have $100, right? What I can do is, I can then
just go out there and buy my shares of IBM back, right? So I buy one share of IBM. And how much do I have to pay? Do I have to pay $100? Well no, the share of
IBM stock price has dropped to $50. So actually, let me do that. I'm not paying $100 out, I'm
going to pay $50 out. And I'm going to get back
a share of IBM. I'm going to get back a share of
IBM, and that's what I owe. So I'll give it back
to my brokerage. So I will go out, spend $50,
get back a share, and then give that share back to
the brokerage, give it back to that guy. These guys never knew that
anything happened. And in the process,
what happened? I sold the shares for
$100, and I bought them back for $50. So after unwinding this whole
thing-- I used $50 of this $100 to buy the shares back. So how much do I have left? I have $50 left. And I returned the shares of
IBM, so I owe no one anything. So I made $50 off
of this trade. So traditionally in the stock
market, on the long side you want to buy low, sell
high, right? When you're short selling,
you're doing the same thing, but you're doing
it in reverse. You want to sell high
and buy low. Anyway, hopefully that gives
you the general idea of the mechanics of short selling. In the next video I'll talk a
little bit more about what-- this was a very good scenario,
where what I wanted to happen did happen. But in the next video we'll talk
about the risks of short selling, and maybe a little bit
of a discussion of whether it really is good or bad
for the markets, or for society as a whole. See you in the next video.