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Comment by faramarz | Hacker News Reader

So how does the average Joe get in on the IPO action?

Your best bet is to get an actively managed brokerage account with one of the big players and try to convince your broker that they should get you a cut of the action. You'll pay some extra fees, but I don't think anyone smaller than a Goldman or a Morgan Stanley will have much chance at it.

All that said, with the fees and (IMO) over-valuation of the company, I can't really think of any reason average Joe would want to...

I figure there's no room for Facebook to grow with 500 million users - unlike Groupon at 25 million.

Even without growing the number of users they have, they can certainly raise their revenue per user, which is the big question as far as I can tell.

Facebook or Groupon?

Facebook.

Something tells me you have a good chance of hearing about it before it happens.

>How does the average Joe get in on the shorting action

FTFY

I am chomping at the bit to short them so badly.

champing at the bit.

It seems to be a valid alternative: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chomp_at_the_bit

It isn't. Horses champ at their bits when they're anxious to go. Post-rationalizing "chomping at the bit" is simply incorrect.

Prescriptivists acting as if their fetish is important is more amusing when it's not distracting from demonstrably more valuable subject matter.

I wasn't using some of kind of mongoloid newspeak.

Chill out

Unfortunately, the strategy's not a lock even if you're right on the fundamentals; quoth Keynes, "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

Concretely: If a parade of idiots bid up the price for no good reason whatever, the price is still going up, and you're still at risk of a margin call because of it.

(Accounts with short positions are (quoth investopedia[1]) typically required to own securities worth at least as much as the shorted shares, and typically 30-40% than that. If the value of the shorted shares goes up, you can be required to give the broker more cash to meet this margin requirement, or close out the position immediately at a loss. So, if a stock is getting bid up by crazed fools, and you think it's the next Enron, you can still go broke shorting it even if you're right, unless the crazed fools come to their senses before you run out of money to cover the margin requirement.)

[1]: http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/shortmarginrequir...

That depends entirely on how it's structured. There's other ways to short a stock indirectly that don't involve equity or margin calls.

You're quite right though. (Keynes quote)

No reason you can't work actively against them and publicize their lack of a sustainable revenue model compared to similarly valued companies while you maintain the position.

Nobody said you had to be silent while your money is on the table. I'd happily work against them.

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