Speculating
In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, good (economics), goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. (It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.) Many speculators pay little attention to the fundamental value of a security and instead focus purely on price movements. In principle, speculation can involve any tradable good or financial instrument. Speculators are particularly common in the markets for stocks, bond (finance), bonds, commodity futures, currency, currencies, fine art, collectibles, real estate, and derivative (finance), derivatives. Speculators play one of four primary roles in financial markets, along with hedge (finance), hedgers, who engage in transactions to offset some other pre-existing risk, arbitrageus who seek to profit from situations where Fungibility, fungible instruments trade at different prices in different market segments, and investors who s ...
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Short Sales
In finance, being short in an asset means investing in such a way that the investor will profit if the Market value, value of the asset falls. This is the opposite of a more conventional "Long (finance), long" Position (finance), position, where the investor will profit if the value of the asset rises. There are a number of ways of achieving a short position. The most fundamental method is "physical" selling short or short-selling, which involves borrowing assets (often Security (finance), securities such as Share (finance), shares or Bond (finance), bonds) and selling them. The investor will later purchase the same number of the same type of securities in order to return them to the lender. If the price has fallen in the meantime, the investor will have made a profit equal to the difference. Conversely, if the price has risen then the investor will bear a loss. The short seller must usually pay a fee to borrow the securities (charged at a particular rate over time, similar to ...
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