Shorting stock is where you “borrow” the shares for a fee. So say you borrow Twitter at 33, you collect $33. It goes down to 22, you pay the share back at 22 and keep $11. But if the stock goes to 45, you owe 12, so there’s a loss. Depending on how much the stock rises, there is infinite risk.

You can also buy a put contract that says, if Twitter goes down to $22, you collect the value of 100 shares at 33, minus the contract cost. The contract would probably be something like $500 for a 2-3 week expiration. So you pay 500, and you would collect something like $1300 depending on how much the stock moves (there’s a whole formula to calculate value). However, if the stock doesn’t move enough, or fast enough, the option loses value and could expire worthless. You can’t lose more than the option value though, so your risk is the contract price, in this case $500.

If you want to short with much less risk, look at inverse ETFs. SQQQ is a hedge against big tech, so if big tech falls, it rises fast. This is not a long term hold, and is designed to be sold at the top, so you need to watch it.

Based on March numbers, it rocketed up to $130, and is currently at about $14. So if you buy and hold, it March repeats, you’d get $13000 from a $1400 investment.

The upside is that shares do not expire, and while it may lose value, it will not go to zero. If you are wrong now, you might be right further down the road. You similarly can invest in $VXX and related stocks (volatility). Same concept, but it’s based on market volatility.

Based on March numbers (when we had our mini market crash) many inverse ETFs have a 10-15x upside.

But again, be warned that you need to keep an eye on it. SQQQ is triple leveraged, so it moves very fast. While it did hit $130, it was only there for a few days. It may have gone higher, but you need to decide when you feel comfortable selling.

I personally have investments split among $VXX, $SQQQ, $SRTY, $TZA, $UVXY

Edit: $SQQQ hit $160 in March.