One of America's most vocal proponents of short selling – this year's best performing hedge fund strategy – is shutting down his fund after dubbing shorting "stressful, nerve-wracking and generally not very much fun." He added that he wanted to leave an industry that overcharged and then "ran at the first sign of trouble" by not letting investors redeem from it.

Bill Fleckenstein, president of Fleckenstein Capital, based in Seattle, said he was shutting down the short-selling portfolio he has run since 1996, which he closed to new investors four years later.