FIFO or LIFO when short-selling

I bought shares in 2020 through my employer's share purchase plan that are locked-in until 31 Dec 2025. They are on a company investment platform and I cannot sell them until 1 Jan 2026. If sold today I would realise a gain of €1,300.

If I opened a short position (sell) in the same shares on Degiro, and then closed that position (buy), does FIFO or LIFO apply to the sale?

Hi @dub_nerd, did you find out the answer to your question?

One of the companies I worked for had some sort of rule that we weren't allowed short the stock despite not being insiders.

Not sure if that was enforceable (that company had a lot of questionable rules).

ashambles said:

One of the companies I worked for had some sort of rule that we weren't allowed short the stock despite not being insiders.

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How are you not an insider as an employee of the company? You will always be in possession of some level of insider information not available to the general public.

I thinking of the more technical defintion they seem to use of insider, any US company I've worked at has had a group of employees who can't freely trade their shares - they may be allowed for example only to do automatic sales on specific dates in the quarter. These are officers, directors, CEO, CFO etc. also some finance employees who have broad information on company performance.

General employees won't have be seen to have enough information to be insiders from the perspective of the SEC at least. Though they will always have more information than people outside the company.

ashambles said:

any US company I've worked at has had a group of employees who can't freely trade their shares

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Ok, any US company that I worked for had blackout periods that applied to all staff and everybody was subject to the same insider restrictions.

Whilst not all US companies would impose insider restrictions to all staff at all times, for example short selling is usually a big no-no.
I mean, you do not want your employees sending a signal to the market that the share price will go down.
Enforceable - maybe not, but if found out, you will face disciplinary action (usually means get fired on the spot).

As an example for Apple with 170,000 employees - this is yahoo finance's current list of insiders (a surprisingly short list of 10 people so probably incomplete but indicative) which they get from "the last 24 months of Form 3 & Form 4 SEC filings."


Personally I'd not risk shorting shares in a company I was working in - I have no idea what access the company has to shorting information - maybe none but I just don't know.