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I think there are a lot of interesting points to the article. It's currently not possible to short Uber directly, but you could go through a derivatives broker,

by yladiz 10y ago

I think there are a lot of interesting points to the article. It's currently not possible to short Uber directly, but you could go through a derivatives broker, or you could short a company indirectly, like Xchange, or buy stocks in a company that would profit if Uber collapsed. I think that while you can't directly short Uber, you can get creative... and I'm sure that with the number of people that want to short Uber, and if it did a down round that would be even higher, that there will be some possibility of shorting Uber directly before IPO. I'm curious why Uber isn't on any of those private exchanges. Is Uber worried it would be shorted if it were?

ryporter 10y ago
Private companies often want to control who and how many of their shareholders are. It is likely not because they fear being shorted. The market for short selling private companies is currently a very distant threat. Let's say you place a short bet on Uber through one these "creative" methods that uses a smaller exchange, then you have to worry not just about Uber's price rising, but also that you will not be able to unwind the trade should it become profitable. Doing so could prove to be impossible either for legal reasons (e.g., if Uber or some other company launches lawsuits as their price drops), or if the exchange simply goes belly up. In short, you better be very, very sure that Uber's price will drop substantially in order to make sure a risky bet.