> Short sellers often (...) blatantly distribute FUD. I'm going to call a [citation needed] on that. It's already very illegal to spread false information in o

> Short sellers often (...) blatantly distribute FUD. I'm going to call a [citation needed] on that. It's already very illegal to spread false information in order to profit from short-selling. In fact, I'd say that shorts are overly scrutinized in comparison to longs. Both are important for price discovery and both have the potential to cause a misallocation of capital if they spread false information in favor of their position, yet people seem to have a positivity bias that makes them more willing to forgive someone who spoke positively of an overhyped stock than someone who spoke negatively of a good stock. Given short-sellers' importance in exposing "creative accounting" and excessive hype, I worry that the current popular sentiment against them will discourage further shorting even more than the financial incentives already do (a long has an unbounded upside with the downside capped at 100%, while a short has an unbounded downside with the upside capped at 100%).