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Inside the mind of retail short sellers

Nina Klocke & Matthias Pelster

Review of Derivatives Research2026https://doi.org/10.1007/s11147-025-09225-4article
AJG 2ABDC B
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

This paper exploits individual trading records from a large brokerage service to investigate the trading patterns of retail investors who take short positions in stocks using contracts for differences (CFDs). Their risk tolerance, as reported in MiFID II questionnaires, and their leverage usage indicate greater risk-seeking behavior. Short positions, compared to long positions, constitute larger portions of overall portfolios and are more highly leveraged. Yet, short sellers’ research activity does not suggest that they increase the amount of attention paid to stocks before taking short positions. Compared with other CFD traders, short sellers perform worse, and their profit variability is greater.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s11147-025-09225-4

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@article{nina2026,
  title        = {{Inside the mind of retail short sellers}},
  author       = {Nina Klocke & Matthias Pelster},
  journal      = {Review of Derivatives Research},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s11147-025-09225-4},
}

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Inside the mind of retail short sellers

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.