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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>Now I'm looking for ways to make money off the failure of these companies

short them and/or buy puts. it's risky though. the market can remain irrational longer than you can involve solvent, and as the recent meme stocks have shown, the market can be very irrational.

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Shorting even an obvious piece of shit like Lyft is risky in this environment. We're talking about a company that has never earned a profit, has no prospects of ever making a profit, has a huge and rapidly accelerating annual loss on shrinking revenues, the share price of which has doubled in the past year (up 5% today alone). You're going head-to-head with all the lunatics in the world.

That would be called betting against the fed. Excess liquidity trumps subpar fundamentals.

Nikola Motors is another obvious PoS that has had significant retracements up and down in share price for not any particularly sound fundamental reasons. I've been short it since the Hindenburg Research post came out and have made money, but it's been nail-biting at times.

I think buying puts is too expensive given that you've got to get the timing just right (and your upside is capped) and shorting Uber/Lyft is too fraught with "as the COVID recovery story changes good and bad, transportation companies are going to whipsaw some".

Bet with the macro trend, not against it.

I am not a particularly financially savvy person, but I can learn. I found this thread about shorting Uber in 2019 that seems more compelling today:

Is Uber the perfect short? https://old.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/br6hl1/is_uber_the_...

Shorting stocks is always risky. Taking stock picking advise from anonymous people on the internet is a bad idea in general unless you don't care if you lose money.

Keep in mind, you’re retired. Shorts have infinite risk.

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