I got in on 4 of the big quantum computing stocks ~a month ago. I haven't felt this good about a short since Nikola; one of the few times I will use "money left on the table".
I miss Hindenburg.
Unfortunately, most of the scammiest companies (e.g. ones you hear about on HN) are not IPOed, so you can't short them using traditional methods. I'm glad the article points out some non-traditional ones, but I'm not clear on how to actually do it.
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
and shorting something priced in a currency is effectively going long on the currency as well. If the USD takes a dive due to, idk, increasing populism from both major parties, stocks will do quite well in nominal terms. Your shorts will burn and you'll end up far worse than just staying in cash.
For most people, the best way to short is to just hold cash equivalents like short-term treasuries.
Thought terminating cliches only terminate thoughts if you allow them to.
Said another way: “being too early is the same as being wrong”
Your quote is something that AI mania speculators often like to reassure themselves with, but consider the fact that it took 17 years for the NASDAQ to recover from the dotcom bubble when adjusting for inflation. What's being early by a year or two when the consequences take decades to heal over?
If you short a bubble before it goes vertical you lose everything.
See the other posts in this thread discussing Nassim Taleb's strategy of small bets spread over time with highly asymmetric rewards. You can afford to lose it all on small bets nine times in a row, if on the tenth bet you achieve a 100x payout.
also you may have to pay interest on shorted shares. Better to take a Burry/Taleb approach of extreme option bets with small money.
My understanding is that an extremely OTM put on a clear, strongly held thesis would be Burry-like, and many people would be able to do so.
But Taleb's point is that (non-insiders) cannot accurately predict regarding individual securities (hence derivatives), but can identify over-/under-priced OTM options — and that, trading these systematically, one can suffer many repeated "small" losses that become outweighed by the Big One that eventually (yet unpredictably) hits, thus generating overall positive expected value. But, as I further understand Taleb, most people don't have the huge capital that enables such a strategy, and that doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc., are better off making money by plying their professional services and perhaps investing in index funds and the like.
You also have to pay dividends on the shorted shares.
It's pretty clearly not a "how to" that ordinary people can practically use. More like "How someone else might do it."