Going short is a strategy beloved by traders and spread bet afficionados who suspect a company’s shares will fall in value.

Assume that a share price is currently 100p, a bearish spread better may ‘sell’ the stock (which he doesn’t own) in anticipation of it falling to say, 85p.

If he bets £10 for every penny the price falls and the betting firm’s spread allows him to ‘sell’ at 98p, he will, should the share price drop to his desired level, clear a tax-free profit of £130 (98-85 x £10).

Traders achieve something similar by borrowing stock in companies they suspect will fall in value, paying a small fee for doing so.

At the beginning of 2013, the most shorted stock in the FTSE100 and FTSE250 was Home Retail Group.

Almost 20 per cent of the company’s shares were out on loan as traders expected its share price to plummet from the 127p level it had reached on December 31.

As I write, however, Home Retail’s share price is at 157p, a rise of more than 23 per cent.

Most of us are more familiar with Home Retails principle brands, Homebase and Argos, neither of which were expected to last long in the face of relentless online competition. But Argos in particular has thrived.

Like-for-like sales rose by 5.2 per cent in the three months to March 2, Argos’s best performance for seven years, as the company appears to have found a niche which combines retaining a significant high street presence with developing a robust online sales operation.

Add in the fact that within five years Argos wants its own brand products to account for one third of sales and it is easy to see why this strategy, costing £300m over the next three years, has thwarted the short sellers — for now at least.

Argos’s approach provides further evidence that more high street retailers could benefit from the inexorable growth in the digital retail industry.

The ‘click-and-collect’ concept, adapted by a growing number of firms, has resulted in an increasing numbers of customers collecting their online orders from trusted high street locations.

Apart from the convenience of such an arrangement, customers are also able to receive advice from in-store assistants, a feature lacking at online retailers.

When Dragons’ Den star Peter Jones bought camera retailer Jessops out of administration earlier this year, he originally intended dispensing with the company’s high street shops.

But after receiving a large number of emails from former staff, he realised there was another angle to the business worthy of further development and he decided to reopen 30 Jessops stores.

The demand for on-the-spot product advice, coupled with the sense of security a well-known brand offers to those still wary of venturing too far into the ether are considerable assets, which is why Argos is planning to take on Amazon, mindful the online giant does not have a high street presence — yet.

The only downside to Argos’s planned future development is the expected demise of those thick laminated catalogues which have been a feature of the company’s stores since 1973.

They will be replaced with web-based touch screens, while Argos will also roll out new apps for smartphones and tablet computers.

More than 13 per cent of Home Retail stock remains out on loan, but if Argos succeeds in creating a new retail paradigm, the short sellers may have to shift their attention elsewhere.