There are certain things that UBS Asset Management’s head of global equities Nick Irish does not do within his global equity, long/short strategy and pair-trading is one of them.
For him, selling long is usually a result of an investment idea playing out with any alpha successfully extracted, while selling short is a decision based on the supposition that that stock will go down in absolute terms.
Managing volatility is another thing that he does not do although, as he explains, holding twice as many shorts as longs will ensure volatility is dampened anyway.