Wall Street slide nets short sellers $127 billion

Saqib Iqbal Ahmed

Tue, Apr 8, 2025, 8:38 AM 1 min read

By Saqib Iqbal Ahmed

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Short sellers targeting U.S. companies person gained $127 cardinal connected insubstantial from April 2 done Monday aft President Donald Trump's plans for sweeping tariffs sparked a crisp selloff successful stocks, according to information and analytics institution Ortex Technologies.

The data, for U.S. companies with marketplace capitalization $1 cardinal and greater, showed abbreviated sellers' gains for 2025 done Monday astatine $189 billion.

Short sellers purpose to nett by selling borrowed shares and buying them backmost aboriginal astatine a little price.

These bearish investors profited since April 2 arsenic Trump's plans for extended tariffs against U.S. trading partners acceptable disconnected a plunge of astir $5 trillion successful marketplace worth for the S&P 500 index.

Short involvement for assorted banal indexes from astir the globe accrued rapidly from March 31 and peaked connected April 4 earlier starting to drop, information from Ortex showed.

Falling abbreviated involvement typically indicates investors increasing little bearish arsenic good arsenic profit-taking.

"It seems just to accidental that immoderate abbreviated sellers look to beryllium looking to fastener successful their gains," Ortex cofounder Peter Hillerberg said.

On Tuesday, the S&P 500 was up 2.8% successful precocious greeting trade.

(Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed successful New YorkEditing by Mark Porter and Matthew Lewis)