> they are not hurting anything except Musk's feelings Investors help companies, right? They add to the demand for the stock, and keep the price up. Stockholde

> they are not hurting anything except Musk's feelings Investors help companies, right? They add to the demand for the stock, and keep the price up. Stockholders have invested in the company. When shares are created and sold, the new stockholders inject capital into the company, and when shares are re-sold that property of "have injected capital into the company" is in some moral sense transferred at the same time. Short-sellers do the opposite -- they depress the price of the underlying. If short seller S borrows TSLA from holder X and sells to Y, two people are long TSLA (X and Y), but there is only one share between the two of them. If S hadn't been there, the stock price would be higher. From the perspective of market efficiency (and the economy) I agree that short-selling is important. I wish it were easier to do. From the perspective of individual companies, though, short sellers are directly harmful to their success.