one of the worlds largest pension funds is trying its hand at shortselling and is making a killing in the process the canada pension plan investment board disclosed big short positions in virgin galactic holdings the spaceflight company founded by richard branson and bioplastics company danimer scientific since 18 january the investment arm for canadas national pension plan increased its short position on both stocks to 22 and 19 of shares outstanding respectively unusually the fund upped its position in the two shorts for four days in a row according to an analysis of the ccps regulatory disclosures by data firm breakout point read the us market is near the end of a superbubble says fund titan jeremy grantham thats very rare in our records ivan osović founder of breakout point told financial news the shorts illustrate how a successful pension fund can partly protect themselves via shortselling cpp is an outlier among pension funds they are only pension fund regularly disclosing shorts across europe the recent wild swings in markets have proved profitable for the pension fund danimer has plunged some 47 this month while virgin galactic has tumbled about 38 the ccp fund declined to comment to financial news canada pension plans 10year annualised net nominal rate of return is 116 according to the funds website and as of september it says assets under management exceed cad540bn or 427bn a shortseller borrows stock to sell in the market then buys it back after the shares decline returning the stock and pocketing the difference most european regulators require funds to publicly disclose short positions exceeding 05 of a stocks outstanding shares short strategies have had some bright spots after bull markets dominated in 2021 since the start of the year us indexes have trended downward the sp 500 came close to correction territory during intraday trading on 24 january while it closed in the green it is down nearly 75 this year the nasdaq is now considered to be in correction  the index is down more than 10 since 3 january read hedge funds scour reddit a year after gamestop its the tip of the iceberg of generational change the awareness of short selling has grown in the public conscious since last years gamestop saga retail investors tried to squeeze hedge funds who held short position on the company their effort briefly saw the games retailer stock close at 325 a share a 2700 rise to contact the author of this story with feedback or news email jeremy chan