[서울신문] Short selling, earned 39 times more than ants’ debts over 3 years

9175 billion> 23.3 billion… Investment advantage such as information power

Amid controversy over whether to resume short selling in March, a research result showing that the return on short selling investments has been significantly higher than that of credit loan investments over the past three years draws attention. Short selling is an investment method in which stocks are lent and sold in anticipation of a decline in stock prices. It is an investment that is contrary to credit loans in which stocks are bought by borrowing money from a securities company in anticipation of an increase in stock prices.

According to the financial sector on the 17th, Dr. Eun-ah Lim of Hanyang University and Professor Jeon Sang-kyung of Business School published a thesis titled “Investment Performance of Short Selling and Credit Transactions,” in Volume 37, No. 4 of “Financial Management Research” published by the Korean Financial Management Association last month. As a result of analyzing daily short sale and credit transaction (financing) data for 36 months from June 30, 2016 to June 28, 2019, the credit transaction volume was 8.69% of the total market volume, compared to the short sale transaction volume (1.46%). It was about 6 times more. In terms of the amount, the credit transaction amount (547 trillion 9270 billion won, total 7.93%) was twice the amount of the short sale transaction (309 trillion 8132.8 billion won 4.48%).

On the other hand, when the investment proceeds from short selling and credit transactions were estimated based on the average price and holding period, the proceeds from short selling were approximately 9175 billion won and the proceeds from credit transactions were 23.36 billion won. Although the size of the short sale transaction is about half of the credit transaction amount, the daily average profit was about 1.25 billion won, which was 39 times more than the credit transaction revenue (3182 million won).

The researchers said, “In the case of short selling transactions, institutional and foreign investors have a high proportion, but we can see that they are more advantageous than individual investors in terms of cost advantage, choice of stocks, and information power. The researchers also confirmed that the higher the proportion of short selling transactions, the higher the profitability of short selling investments.

Reporter Yoon Yeon-jung [email protected]