It was August 5, 2024, when the global financial markets briefly faltered violently. The Japanese Nikkei index collapsed by twelve percent. At about the same time, poor figures for the US labor market were announced in Washington. And the chip manufacturer NVIDIAuntil then a stock market star, had to report technical problems with the new product generation. The result: Wall Street became nervous, the DAX suddenly plummeted. Picture-The newspaper even wrote of a “Black Monday”.

While such unexpected price drops are likely to have caused great fear among most investors, there is a group of speculators who are even happy about such an event. They are called short sellers. This is the name given to investors whose business model consists of betting on falling prices rather than rising ones.