Paul Solman:
But hold on. Most Wall Street hedge funds aren't short sellers. They bet on stocks going up. And in this case, some hedge funds have actually profited hugely from the so-called revenge of the nerds, as have Robinhood's paying customers, big investors, many of them hedge funds, who buy information from Robinhood about what people there are trading.
As for short sellers, are they bad actors? Sure, they bet against apparent losers like GameStop, but also against frauds, like the infamous Enron, which short sellers helped take down nearly 20 years ago by exposing its phony accounting. Financial analyst James Early:
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