I am looking at shorting specific Japanese companies, such as Tepco. However it may be difficult to short these stocks directly, so I am investigating the possibility of creating a synthetic short, by shorting an index (Nikkei or Topix) and buying a basket that represents most or all of the other stocks. My initial investigations have found this link for Topix data: http://www.tse.or.jp/english/market/topix/data/component.html One consideration is to work out how the index provider(s) calculate an index when a stock like Tepco is ask-only. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conews&tkr=9501:JP Do they use the ask-only price? Or the "last traded" price? And do the futures based on the index trade at a discount to reflect the expected price of the "ask-only" stocks?