K-Bizzle wrote::lol:
No I get what shorting is in simplistic terms, I just do not see how it is useful to our economic system aside from a way for some groups to profit off the failure of other groups.
Is there any purpose/use aside from just treating the stock market like dog track?
The purpose, in theory, is that large investors with good research resources might be finding out that the fundamentals of a company are a lot worse than the market currently believes. "Shorting" the stock is (in addition to future profit) telling the market "we believe this stock is overvalued enough to put money up against it", which drives more correct valuations, and in some cases even drives unhealthy companies out of the market entirely.
All of this assumes a rational market, which it clearly isn't nearly all of the time. It's much quicker to ride trends to highs and lows than to actually do proper fundamental analysis and invest on real value.
For myself, I missed all this Gamestop/AMC stuff until yesterday. I watched Gamestop tank with interest, and read how Robinhood basically killed themselves by blocking those stocks. I have been investing in the past year (the Corona low was a great time to get in). I've got a bunch of ETFs with most of my money, and though I was late, I did make about 30% on Tesla, and a little-known stock called Materialise that is very volatile. Now, I've worked for these guys, I know they are serious. The valuations are stupid, but fundamentally they are healthy and I don't mind taking a punt.
The one HUGE rule I have though is that any time I'm 15% up on my original position, I sell 85% of the stock. I often rebuy if they fall more than 5%-10% afterwards (depends on what the rest of the market is doing).
Psychologically, it means that most of my more risky positions are now "free" because of the huge Corona swings - I've already made my money back, what I have left over was my profit.
Still, would have loved to have had a crystal ball and bought Tesla back last march, sold it early this month and then bought gamestop to sell the day before yesterday. I'd be buying a lot of Mayones guitars
