The FSA should bring back the ban on shorting in times like these Stongle
I hope your joking!!! I think that shorting stocks is massively important to enable the market to function. Firstly for liquidity reasons and secondly it ensures stocks are priced to their true value. Obviously those pesky hedge funds exploited this somewhat, but I do think the correct approach by the FSA should have been to ban naked shorts, not short selling per-se.
There should be an emphasis on Fund and Trust managers to limit the supply of stocks into Stock Loan programs if "Shorting" (prices nose diving) and subsequent stock loan / borrows will trash portfolio values. Stocks going short in the market but with a lack of supply will soon reverse price falls (in turn preserving portfolio / fund values), due to mandatory Buy-Ins.
That being said, a good short at the moment would be anyone involved in building homes, Hovis, Persimon etc!
As to the call options, good point! Novice investors can never be too highly geared.......
