Don't Blame the Shorts Continues Top Ratings

NEW YORK, June 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The critically acclaimed Don't Blame the Shorts: Why Short Sellers Are Always Blamed For Market Crashes And How History Is Repeating Itself (McGraw-Hill), written by Robert Sloan, a Wall Street veteran and managing partner of S3 Partners, is nominated for the Financial History Book of the Year at the Spear's Book Awards.  The award recognizes a corporate history or non-fiction book that best examines a historical incident, trend or period of interest to readers of Spear's Wealth Management Survey.

Don't Blame the Shorts has also been named one of the best business books of the year by The Economist, which said:

"While other authors point accusing fingers, in his book, 'Don't Blame the Shorts', Robert Sloan leaps to the defense of short-sellers who, as he describes, have long been scapegoated for market crashes, and are being once again in the wake of the recent crisis. The Dutch East India Company was blaming its troubles on them as far back as 1609."

In addition, Bloomberg has recognized Don't Blame the Shorts as one of the Top 50 Business Books resulting from the financial crisis.

"As market volatility continues, it comes as no surprise that countries and governments alike are both reaching into the historical playbook of blaming short sellers," said Mr. Sloan.  "For example, Germany recently tried to ban shorting of CDS and re-engineer the mechanics for how stocks are shorted, and other countries are considering similar actions.  While politically-appeasing in the near term, banning the act of short selling is a deflection tactic that serves as a temporary political fix while robbing capital markets liquidity for use by governments themselves.  Don't Blame the Shorts explains how this tactic of shifting blame from companies and countries to markets backfires and puts the debate into historical context highlighting its failure century after century."

Recent praise for Don't Blame the Shorts also includes:

"As [Robert Sloan] shows in this readable polemic, dislike of shorting has a long history...But the shorts' role in driving crashes is overstated...Indeed, eventually short-sellers help markets recover since they must buy back the stocks they have sold. Banning their activities simply reduces market liquidity...Someone has to point out when the emperor has no clothes."  --The Economist

"Robert Sloan manages to go the distance in "Don't Blame the Shorts"...because his book is as much about historical tensions between Washington and Wall Street as the practice of short selling.  It is a brave act take on anti-finance populists at this time."  --John Plender, senior editor and columnist, Financial Times

"A must-read for students, observers, and participants in the capital markets' system."  --Meredith Whitney, CEO, Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, LLC

"Sloan digs through the archives to discover that the debate goes back well  beyond the Great Depression and reveals recurring tensions between populism and capitalism, rural and urban America- and, of course, between Main Street and Wall Street."  --Neil Wilson, Columnist, Absolute Return + Alpha

About Robert Sloan

With over twenty years of Wall Street experience, Robert Sloan is an expert in market structure and how capital markets activity interact with hedge funds, regulation and short selling

About S3 Partners

Robert Sloan is the managing partner of S3 Partners, LLC, a New York and London-based firm that lets their hedge fund clients get the best out of their prime brokerage relationships. He is the founder and managing member of the firm which he founded in 2003. S3 Partners provides portfolio-critical price discovery and best execution for financing services for its hedge fund clients. S3 Partners' team of expert professionals has over 200 years of combined experience at the most senior levels at major sell- and buy-side firms.

SOURCE S3 Partners