Short Selling Dissertation Help (Please)!

Water Cooler Investing
#1

I am in the process of deciding a topic for my postgrad dissertation and would like to look at short selling. This area is very new to me as I have only gone long on stocks. I am particularly interested in short selling in more illiquid/less regulated markets as not much research has been conducted in this area. One of the ideas I am considering is investigating how vulnerable they are to manipulation from people who talk them down for self gain.

To do this I would have to iinvestigate shares that are being de-ramped on websites/forums and link corresponding short sales data with the falling share prices.

I would appreciate if anybody could help me understand where I need to go to find shorts data on AIM/NASDAQ companies. I have Bloomberg and TR Datastream but am still a novice and was wondering if they are sufficient or any additional software would help improve my chances of success!

All constructive advice welcome!

Thanks in advance

#2

short sellin have bad economics. i suggest you do something about how poorly it performs. i.e. a contrarian hypoth where u look up stocks with most sell recommendations presumably with the lowest target prices that would be the best candidate for short selling according to sell side research and you see how they performn 1-year 5-year 10-year. very curious as to how they perform. i would think, they would perform very well as some previous research suggested in the short term, but what are the medium/long term implications. this way it is very easy. target prices are easy to aggregate and calculate. so this should be an easy task. u can also do the opposite for the most loved companies. do it from a historical standpoint. i.e. since 1995 to 2005 top 10 loved top 10 hated for each year. then show the performance. you can basically see how they perform in the short term, medium term, long term.