Up Tick Rule
To sell your stock short, you must adhere to the up-tick rule. The transaction before your short sale must have been executed at a higher price than the transaction before it. In other words, the transaction before your short sale must be an up-tick.
In practice, you cannot short a stock that is already falling in price. Otherwise, short selling would amplify the decline.
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Uptick Rule
What does it Mean? A former rule established by the SEC that requires that every short sale transaction be entered at a price that is higher than the price of the previous trade. This rule was introduced in the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as Rule 10a-1. The uptick rule prevents short sellers from adding to the downward momentum when the price of an asset is already experiencing sharp declines. The SEC eliminated the rule on July 6, 2007.
The uptick rule was also be known as the “plus tick rule”.
Investopedia Says… By entering a short sale order with a price above the current bid, a short seller ensures that his or her order is filled on an uptick. The uptick rule is disregarded when trading some types of financial instruments such as futures, single stock futures, currencies or market ETFs such as the QQQQ or SPDRs. These instruments can be shorted on a downtick because they are highly liquid and have enough buyers willing to enter into a long position, ensuring that the price will rarely be driven to unjustifiably low levels.
