Something else to take into consideration: When you buy shares of a company on a stock exchange, your money doesn't actually go to that company; it goes to whoever sold you those shares. The company got money from those shares when they first issued them. Likewise, when you short shares of a company, such as Tesla, you aren't actually taking money away from them. If the price of Tesla stock goes down, that negatively impacts people who hold Tesla stock (unless they see it as a buying opportunity), but ultimately, like any other business, Tesla will live & die not by its stock price, but by its ability to generate sales. And people who buy Tesla's cars do it because they buy into the vision, not because of Tesla's stock performance.
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Capitalism is about money, the best vision or science is which one produces profits. More profit=higher stock price. But short sellers are picking vulnerable companies, where the business model lacks on something.
Right. The point I'm making is that since a company's ability to profit doesn't depend on the performance of its stock price (although, sooner or later, the stock price will be affected by the company's ability to profit), the activities of short-sellers don't directly affect a business's ability to be successful as a business. Hence, on that count as well, the idea that short-sellers hurt companies is misguided.