CMKM Diamonds Inc (fka CMKX)

[janice shell]

Sure. That's what shorting's mostly about. For example, if you'd suspected yesterday that Intel would be issuing an earnings warning, then it would have been smart to short Intel.

Would Intel management have held that against you? Of course not. Next quarter you may think things look better, and decide to go long.

People also short as a hedge. For example: if you own Intel and don't want to sell because you'd rather not pay short term capital gains tax, but you believe that Intel's in for a bad quarter or two, then you can short (in a different account) against your long position. This is considered to be a very conservative hedging strategy.

You could do the same by writing calls against your long stock position (or you could buy puts, though covered calls are a better option, so to speak).