Pend - Proponants of short trading claim it is important to maintaining liquidity. I won't argue that but like anything done in excess causes problems. Naked shorts is one such example.

I personally have only shorted a few times and only in day trading situations where I was in and out in a matter of minutes or hours. Being a technical trader I can see some advantages but I personally don't like it.

In the past KRY was affected by short sellers but not now. The short is such a small % of float that it won't impact us. I wish there was a large short now because it would set up a short squeeze that would benefit longs.

I think much of the rapid decline in the markets however was when the fed removed the "uptick rule" This basically meant you could only short on an up tick which meant someone was willing to buy at the ask an there was volume to lift it a little. In this way it prevented stocks from being shorted as they dropped and hammered down. Shortly after that rule was removed we saw the collapse of the market.

I think there is a place for shorting but it needs to be controlled as there is much more harm by a large trader in shorting high volume than in going long.