Also called: short position, go short, shorting, selling
Selling something expecting its price to go down — the bearish opposite of going long.
To "go short" means to sell with the expectation that the price will fall. In stocks, this means borrowing shares from someone, selling them, and buying them back cheaper later. In forex, it's simpler — you just click the "sell" button. Because every forex quote is already a pair (you're buying one currency and selling the other), shorting a pair is just buying the quote currency and selling the base.
Shorts profit when prices fall. A short on EUR/USD opened at 1.1000 and closed at 1.0900 makes 100 pips of profit. Shorts work identically to longs in forex — same spreads, same leverage, no borrow fees.
Beginners often shy away from shorting because it "feels weird" to profit from a falling market. That hesitation is expensive — in forex, half of all trades need to be shorts, because markets fall as often as they rise.
Shorting GBP/USD during the Sep 2022 mini-budget collapse netted traders 1,000+ pips in three days as the pound crashed to a 37-year low.
Frequently asked about short
What is a short in trading?+
Selling something expecting its price to go down — the bearish opposite of going long.
When will I see short used in real trading?+
Bear markets, downtrends, after a fake breakout above resistance. Shorts dominate when risk-off news drives capital to the USD.
What is the most common mistake traders make with short?+
Avoiding shorts because "markets always go up." They don't. And in forex there's no such thing as "up only" — every pair that rises is also a pair that's falling from the other side.
What do experienced traders know about short that beginners don't?+
Shorts can run faster and further than longs because fear moves quicker than greed. If you spot a clean downtrend, be ready to ride it — don't cut winners short just because they "feel wrong."
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