Econocast: 'On ShortZ'

Based on an article that I didn't really read, it sounds like a lot of crybabies are crying like babies because a few people made fortunes shorting everything the last year or so. Well these people are champions. Or they are at least a lot cooler than people who loose all their money. Those people are comedy. [Disclosure: I have no money].

Since the piece is from portfolio mag i assume it ends up saying that he's a genius. If I had the patience to read something with so few swears in it I'd be working at a library.

The accusation seems to be that they should have shared their short-selling secret with everyone. a) it definitely wasn't much of a secret, and b) if you watch this you can see how keen people were on hearing it. If you try and warn them they just squint and say 'yoar ghey'. Instantly. Anyway it bewilders me how these people, who presumably get paid to concentrate on this full-time, manage to fail so hard, all the time, in exactly the same way, and then act like the few people who don't completely suck at their jobs are the ones doing it wrong.

What did it actually mean to 'sell short' in this case?

Let's say that there was this kid called Michael Clyne, who was pretty good at leaving his bike outside dairies with no lock on it for days at a time. So his name is ringing out. People want to know him. Also his friends are pegged at like 1%. Which is fuck all.

Then - high on sugar - he tells everyone at a family barbecue that he's going to take his Uncle's totally awesome dirt bike and do a wheelie literally right accross the surface of the pool like one of those water skipping lizards. That seems fucking unlikely. But then again his bike hasn't been stolen either, even though he's been just leaving it on the sidewalk for days at a time.

(Oh yeah: Clyne is a bunch of poor people paying off housez and also I guess he is a bunch of people trading the responsibility of paying someone back if they loose money on investments derived from the loans on those housez. Seriously. Clyne's Uncle is China. The dirtbike is actually a dirtbike.)

Anyway you know that Clyne clearly can't, in a million years even-if-he-wasn't-so-fat, get his bike to do The Thing He's Telling Everyone at the Family BBQ That He Can Do. So you tell everyone that if they're so stoked on Clyne then you promise to be at least as stoked as they are, but later. Take special note of the smug facials as they make this deal. They think they're ripping you off. But you know you will only have to pay them back with fail (what their stokedness will have become by then). Because's Clyne's stunts are always a let-down.

And so when, predictably, Clyne gets up on his roof and starts throwing berries at everyone at the BBQ, and doesn't even attempt the jump, you get to make out with one of his sisters.

The point is that betting against Clyne's stunt is a sensible, if non-trivial, strategy. And it takes two to bet. (Also: useful price signals, opportunities to hedge against unavoidable exposure, etc). Mainly though the point is that Clyne, if he is out there, should SHOW HIMSELF. Econocast over.