I trade long and rarely do it for the dividend. I still don't know what all the fuss is about. I'd be happy to trade short or long (or the equivalent using options) but I'm not market savvy enough yet.
It's too easy to get emotionally attached to a company and forget you're only in it for the money. And it's too easy to look for someone to blame when the bubble bursts.
It's not short traders that broke the bank, it was the loonies making up derivatives out of borrowed funds made up of more borrowed funds etc etc, making so much money out of nothing they thought they could get away with it forever.
The companies who produce goods are the ones that suffered because they could no longer borrow funds to operate and neither could their customers and suppliers. The credit was no longer there because the banks didn't trust each other and half of them were broke. So the shares dropped in price because the companies weren't able to produce or sell any more. Nothing to do with short traders. More of a problem with long traders who got similarly carried away and kept buying shares well beyond their worth.
