Greenspun on shorting: It is 1986. You buy yourself an IBM PC. You are using MS/DOS and say "This sucks. It isn't even as good as operating systems from 1960."

Greenspun on shorting: It is 1986. You buy yourself an IBM PC. You are using MS/DOS and say "This sucks. It isn't even as good as operating systems from 1960." You're a computer expert so you know that the technology is pathetic. You do some business research and find that out that the company making this MS/DOS product didn't even have the in-house expertise to build it itself. They bought it from another company!" You call your broker and find out that this "Microsoft" company is publicly traded and selling for a very lofty price/earnings ratio. You smell blood and say "I want to short 100 shares of Microsoft." I sure hope he didn't do it, but he seems to have such bad karma, who knows. http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/money http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/money