Why can you not open a short position?

Hi All,

I am currently learning my way around a demo account at Citi Index and while doing some spread bets, I was greated by this statement:
Sorry, your trade was declined:
Reason: Instruction processing has resulted in a Red Card. Please check details.
Order: Cannot open a new short position as the market is currently set to accept long positions only.

Does anyone know why this happens?
Is this a standard thing?
I could open a LONG bet on this stock but for some reason I couldn't open a SHORT position on that same stock

Any ideas?

Thanks

Don't trade with bucket shops.

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Maybe the underlying stock cannot be shorted

FXX said:

Don't trade with bucket shops.

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

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... sorry, I am new to this ... don't understand what "bucket shops" are

What stock was it Vic ? Have you googled it for a answer ?

cbrads said:

Maybe the underlying stock cannot be shorted

Click to expand...

Why not? I thought all spreads could be taken as LONG and SHORT .... how would you know?

mike. said:

What stock was it Vic ? Have you googled it for a answer ?

Click to expand...

it was TESLA (Nasdaq) ... I am on a Demo account so what just trying to see how easy/difficult it was to "jump onto" a declining stock - TESLA had a sharp sell-off in early trade today

VicZA said:

it was TESLA (Nasdaq) ... I am on a Demo account so what just trying to see how easy/difficult it was to "jump onto" a declining stock - TESLA had a sharp sell-off in early trade today

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Bit of a strange one that, there’s no restrictions to shorting Tesla, Remember that you are playing against a computer algorithm, the stock might of been in free fall when you tried to short it, computer says no...

VicZA said:

it was TESLA (Nasdaq) ... I am on a Demo account so what just trying to see how easy/difficult it was to "jump onto" a declining stock - TESLA had a sharp sell-off in early trade today

Click to expand...

Contrary to your expectations, it is not as easy to short a stock as in going long. Your best recourse is to go to the source of your problem i.e. Citi index to understand the issues and process. After all you are conducting diligence to learn and understand the process and different providers may have their own unique internal risk management mechanism.

During the GFC days, my platform provider would regularly issue updates on list of stocks on the off short list. It was a function of market dictated activities and regulatory compliance. Institutions cannot simply short stocks but actually need to borrow in order to short. There are obvious flow on consequences onto "bucket shops" because they also have to hedge their own books to manage risk.

the indexes are long for much time. we don't know when they break down really..

Thanks for the help guys ... may have just been a glitch in the martix