Short-sellers are struggling despite a bad year for stocks

were “treasonous”; to Tom Farley, a former boss of the New York Stock Exchange, “icky and un-American”. Short-sellers, who bet against the stockmarket, have always been unpopular—and essential. Today’s big names rose to fame by exposing corporate wrongdoing and irrational exuberance. Michael Lewis’s “The Big Short”, a popular account of the global financial crisis of 2007-09, puts the “misfits, renegades and visionaries” who bet against overvalued mortgage-backed debt at the centre of the story.