Your stocks are worth 1billion. Economic collapse = your stock is worth 100 million. If you divorce your wife beforehand, she can sell half of the stocks without creating panic in the markets, so she gets 500 millions, and even if the value of your stocks plummets to 1 dollar, she still has those 500 millions. Say you shorted a company expecting it to go bankrupt soon, and that company makes a giant turnaround and is not looking to collapse soon, at some point you have to cover your shortw using your remaining liquidity. If your former wife sold all her stocks, those can't be used to cover your short because it's not the same account anymore. I'm not an expert so take this with a grain of salt, but that's the theory behind it.