An email from David K. of Toronto nudges me to post on a point I had thought to include in yesterday’s column on short selling leveraged ETFs – but left on the cutting room floor. It concerns the strategy of shorting leveraged ETFs and the distinction between historical and future ...

Having ranted before on securities lending and how it adds to the systemic risk of the financial system and how the division of the spoils appears to shortchange retail investors, there is a modicum of satisfaction in seeing the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) commence an investigation into the practice. ...

The bubble economy has spawned another bubble. This time it’s government bonds. The flight to safety during 2008 has pushed yields to lows never seen before in Federal Reserve records (compiled since 1962). For example, the yield on the one-month bill stands near 0.04%, two-year note near 0.75%, and ten-year ...

The Ontario Securities Commission has followed the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the UK securities regulator and brought in a temporary ban on short-selling. Here's the release.

U.S. policymakers are obviously willing to go to any length to avert a financial Armageddon, including changing the rules of the game in midstream. The latest, of course, was banning short selling in some 800 U.S. stocks, which effectively engineered a massive squeeze on the short sellers and produced a ...

I carried through on Friday’s plan to unwind the short position on crude oil, selling my holding of the double-short, exchange-traded fund (ETF) Horizons BetaPro NYMEX Oil Bear Plus (HOD). I had planned to do it when the price went up another 5% to give me a 50% gain, but ...

One bright spot in the portfolio these days is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) called the Horizons BetaPro NYMEX Oil Bear Plus (HOD), which double shorts the price of crude oil. Since purchase, as recorded in a June 12 blog post, it’s up 45%. That helps ameliorate some of the pain ...