What is short sale transactions in stocks..?

Question

The share of the company I was watching just got listed onto

http://www.buyins.net/

I have no idea what that means, I did a little reading on the site but I just got more confused, I'm stuck on this term "short sale transactions"

check these pages out

http://www.buyins.net/why_register.php

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=722242

thanks for the review also is this the best place to ask these types of questions regarding this matter or is there a better place.

Thanks again.

Answer 1

first answer is correct.  you might also like to look at www.investopedia.com

Answer 2

A short sale is when a someone sells a stock either with the hope of buying it back at a cheaper price later, or they do not want to use their stock to make delivery for the sale.

When you sell short, you brokerage firm must be able to borrow that security to deliver to the buyer,  If they can not borrow the security, they will not give you permission to sell short.      

When you buy back the stock, to cover your sale, the stock that you buy is given to the lender that lent you the stock for the sale.

The website tracks short sells so they can sell the information to traders, so when they trade they will know the open "short" positions".  The open short list is a listing of those that must buy the stock in order to cover their short sale.

I hope I explain this in a way that you can understand