The old adage remains true, that the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. If I took out a short position on Facebook, what's the lik

The old adage remains true, that the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. If I took out a short position on Facebook, what's the likelihood that it would pay out before I'd burned through my life savings? We're all thinking about it because right now it's a very good time to be a coder, and pretty much every time that's been true, something awful has happened pretty quickly. We're all just invested enough to get burned by it, but not well-heeled enough to put our money where our mouths are. Maybe there's an advertising bubble (I still see a lot of ads for ad-supported services), maybe it's something else, or maybe these toys we've made actually do create a trillion dollars of value to society. Either way, we're along for the ride, and there's little we can do to hedge against it besides being better than the people around us, and hoping to survive the next round of layoffs.