Heard on the Street- Going short, and controversial too

Going short on a stock in the current market is not looked upon as a risky proposition. There are, however, some who always attract eyeballs when they go short on a particular counter. The man in question is known to relish a bear market, although the counters in which he builds up short positions always end up in controversies, thereby fuelling theories of ���more-than-what-meets-the-eyes���.

This person, who shares his first name with a heavyweight Maharashtra politician on the BCCI board, was said to have built up huge short positions in Core Projects & Technologies that more than halved in one single trading session on October 13.

The market was again abuzz with his name when ICICI Bank was being hammered from all sides. Now his name is being associated with Unitech that has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Marketmen feel that he has significant short positions in case of Unitech that has been fighting against reports of one default after another. If market grapevine is to be believed, then he is in the know of trading calls of quite a few hedge funds that help him in building a position before the fund embarks on a selling spree.

Contributed by Amriteshwar Mathur & Ashish Rukhaiyar