Long and Short

Hellooooz,,,

While i was exploring the forum, I came to an unanswered question!!!!
the Q, is: why do we call buy position long and sell position short???

Any comments!!

typical answer, as i expected ,,,,,
but realy i do need an answer!!!!!

Best I can get:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_(finance)

Check link for "Short (finance)

Comes from the equity market.

It's because of a thing that can go long and short automatically. I think half of human population have it.

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LONG as a "buy" and SHORT as a "sell" are the result of the inventor of the MT4 platform, as they do not exist in real life.

with any other platform, one either "buys" or "shorts" and then one "sells" their long (buy) position or "covers" their short position !

what do you expect from a platform written originally in Russian ??

enjoy and trade well

mp

when i asked that question a year ago, a fund manager reply me,...at first there was only a short, and long is oposite from short, so thats why?....maybe beacuse bulls are so slow, that u have to wait long, and bears happen so fast that u just got to get rid real short....i dont care, but god bless we got 2 ways,...

These are the same terms used by the US Stock Market for years and years. A carried tradition.

In my opinion, it has something to do with the language...When you ask someone if he is on the buy side or the short side, you don't usually ask if they are buy the stock or short the stock, that's why people invented the word long so that when they ask they say, are you long the market or short it ?


Thanks,

Nader

while you have received a number of answers pertaining to the "origins" of the words, I believe your confusion centers around the fact that when one uses the MT4 platform in forex, one is introduced to a rather unusual terminology in the trading world.

with MT4, one "buys" a long position and one "sells" which creates a short position --- to exit either, one then "closes" their positions.

fortunately when i first came to forex it was in a demo that i discovered this amazing use of terminology, as i repeatedly SOLD my long position, and couldnt understand why my profit continued to decrease as my now brand new 20 lots of shorts continued to eat into equity.

In the "normal" world of trading, on all trading panels, BUY means to go long, SHORT means to go short, SELL means to sell your long and COVER means to cover and exit your short position.

Ive joked about it, but the MT4 program IS a russian program, and very probably the terminology difference was created by the differences in language.

while the origins of the words are interesting, your confusion and question is based simply on MT4's inaccurate use of the english language !

enjoy and trade well

mp

thanks for the lovely help,,,
I may be less confused right now,, but the question remains,
Why couldn't we got the origin of those words in the resources (Books , lectures, ...etc)..
I remember my last year in college, the financial derivatives risk Prof. was very astonished why no one can answer that, so i reversed the question to him in a crowded lecture, and surely he didn't know the answer, so he got embarrassed (he is the best trader ever with very complex methods), so i kept the presure on him through this question, at last he fired me out.

Thanks for sharing minds!!!!

I'm sure MT4 is very appreciative of your comments but, alas, "Long" and "Short" have been in everyday use for far longer than USSR {even the US Army for that matter} had access to the internet let alone figuring out a way to profit from it.