I agree with you, wombat.
Whilst some of my long-term investment share prices have suffered greatly from the actions of shorts, I have benefitted equally greatly in buying in at a low after the shorts have devastated the share prices of good companies. Lose some, win some. Such is my rather ordinary karma, I suppose.
Even if we're not into the actual shorting of shares ourselves, I believe that we can still exploit their effects to our financial advantage. A trick to it is to keep some powder dry, in other words, resist the temptation to use up all the spare cash.
I see no point in expending so much time and energy into hating shorts because there's just no investment return arising from all that hatred. Similarly so in the case of shorters who deride those who hold long-term investment. Why waste their time doing that? They don't get any financial profit out of it either. (Years later, I still wonder why shorters gloat at long-term investors who choose to use a different strategy and have suffered in the downturn. What business is it of theirs? Despite their self-acclaimed massive profits, seems that these shorters' lives might be so empty that they need to sneer at others as a form of over-compensation. What does that really say about themselves?)
For me it's all about the timing of entry and exit. Perhaps one day there will be an all-time best-selling book written by a brilliant person on how to find and lucratively apply that elusive balance between the rational and the gut feeling for investing in shares or commodities.
Cheers.
P.S. Thumbs ups to you, atomic, JID and a few others whose monikers did not pop up in my mind while typing this final line. Luv your posts.
