Right on cue, as equities begin to slide and the powers that be realize that they’re running out of magic pixie dust, the witch hunt begins. Bloomberg reports:

People should not be able to profit from falling share prices.

The premise sounds reasonable enough. After all, pensions, 401(k)s, consumer confidence, tax receipts, and this reporter’s livelihood all to some degree depend on a healthy stock market. What kind of brute would cash a check drawn on the financial misery of the masses?

Disdain for short selling—borrowing shares with the intention to buy them back later at a lower price—seems even more unassailable when the shorts’ targets are systemically vital, taxpayer-backstopped financial institutions. This is why Washington shielded banks and brokerage firms from short selling in the immediate wake of the Great Bailout of ’08. And it’s why European governments under financial siege are attempting to do much the the same now (again, actually), even as there is scant evidence that these kinds of bans are effective.

Well, at least they admit it doesn’t work. Still, it’s the first two paragraphs that don’t sit well with us. They’re right that there are a great many things that rely on an upward trajectory in stocks. Still, the risk taken on by investors in this capacity, in many ways, comes back to their investment selection and reliance on portfolios that aren’t diversified. If more pensions and 401(k)s used allocations to non-correlated asset classes like managed futures, perhaps they wouldn’t be in this situation. Just because they currently rely on stock market health doesn’t mean they have to.

And it’s statements like that which make us highly unpopular at dinner parties.

Regardless, this article, in our opinion, should be a neon-painted buy signal for managed futures. If we’re talking about banning the short sellers, things are spiraling out of the control of the people attempting to guide the economy, and since we know such bans rarely work, it might be time to brace ourselves for a hard downturn. In our minds, if that’s the direction we’re headed, we’d rather be invested in an asset class that doesn’t rely on a healthy stock market.