No, not really. You need to risk a lot of capital to make any money at all. For instance, to make even $10,000 on a 5% drop in Facebook stock, you would need t

No, not really. You need to risk a lot of capital to make any money at all. For instance, to make even $10,000 on a 5% drop in Facebook stock, you would need to sell short $200,000 in Facebook stock and would need to have $100,000 in cash deposited with a broker (initial margin). If the stock goes up by even a penny, you would need additional margin to cover that. A young hacker with no money cannot make any by shorting stocks.