Impact of Short Selling on Volatility of Individual Stocks and Aggregate Market: Empirical Evidence from China

Abstract

This paper explored the linkage between short selling and market stabilization. While financial and economic theory advocates the positive role played by short sellers for market stabilization, short sellers are frequently blamed for causing market decline and increasing the panic in falling markets. China’s regulators allowed short selling in 2010 and this reform provided us an interesting data set to check whether short sellers destabilize the market or play a positive role. By using asymmetric TGARCH model on daily return data of Shanghai Stock Exchange 50 index from January 5, 2007 to June 11, 2012, and taking into account Day-of-the-Week effect, financial crisis and regional and international spillovers, we found robust evidence that short sale trading reduces the volatility and stabilizes the market. Our findings have implications for China’s regulators in policy making as well investors in the Chinese stock market in portfolio development.