How do retail investors survive in the era of short selling?
The recent weak market seems to be stormy, and the news that refinancing will be launched once attracted market attention. In addition, it is also rumored that CITIC Securities (600030) fell sharply because of short selling, and the market seems to have panicked about the short selling mechanism. Rationally speaking, refinancing is not as terrible as imagined, but it is worth noting that retail investors will indeed face a more severe test in the short-selling era. First of all, it should be noted that based on market protection, the CSRC decided to refinance in two steps. The first step is to launch refinancing. There is no timetable for refinancing and securities lending with short-selling function, indicating that it is impossible to use refinancing to short at this stage or even this year. In fact, shorting is not as terrible as the market imagined. Not to mention the lack of domestic short-selling methods, even in the environment of various short-selling methods in mature foreign markets, investors can still make profits by doing more most of the time. In recent exchanges with many well-known investment institutions, I feel that most people in the market believe that the current decline in the A-share market is actually based on the deterioration of fundamental expectations, and the news of refinancing only adds panic to some investors who don't know the truth. Refinancing has unfortunately become the "sinner" of the stock market decline, which reflects a remarkable feature of the China market, that is, the investors are still composed of retail investors, and the immature retail groups are easily influenced or even used by false news. Perhaps the most doubtful thing is the short-term power with institutions as the main body. According to the daily trading details of stock index futures published by CICC, it is found that the empty power of CSI Futures and Guotai Junan Futures in the past six months has overwhelmed many parties, and most of their seats are institutional funds. Originally, institutional funds entered the stock index futures market for hedging, but in fact it has evolved into arbitrage by spot trading. Many institutional traders will take advantage of the unfavorable factors in the market and choose backhand shorting before opening every day. According to the analysis of the semi-annual report recently published by fund companies and securities companies, a considerable part of the income of their self-operated funds in equity investment comes from this. Shorting institutional funds has inherent advantages, such as a strong research and investment team, diversified quantitative trading strategies, news channels and huge investment funds. Based on the above advantages, institutional funds can often seize very short arbitrage opportunities to make profits. In contrast, it is difficult for ordinary retail investors to successfully realize the short arbitrage trading strategy, and they must use the intermediary platform to realize short arbitrage. The two are not an order of magnitude contest, and the result is obvious. Although the goal of shorting at this stage is still limited and its impact on the market is not direct and effective, in the long run, the future market will inevitably be a game between long and short sides. Then for retail investors, the shortcomings of not being good at shorting will undoubtedly be magnified to the extreme, that is, in the era of shorting, the disadvantages of information asymmetry will be more obvious. For short sellers, the spread of bad news and rumors will be an important means to realize short selling, such as spreading rumors in online gub or using various online media channels. This viral spread usually causes a direct and effective blow to the stock price. Faced with such rumors, institutions can quickly confirm information and choose strategies by virtue of channel advantages and team advantages, while retail investors are easy to listen to rumors because of their poor resolution, thus panic selling. There is no doubt that the spread of rumors is fatal to retail investors, which will also make some retail investors become victims of the stock market meat grinder. It can be predicted that with the diversification of short-selling methods, China A-share market will inevitably move closer to mature markets in Europe and America in the future, and most retail investors will be gradually eliminated under the baptism of the market, or choose to entrust funds to institutions for operation. In this process, the wealth management market will usher in greater development opportunities, especially for brokers with professional investment literacy.