MF in MFMMM = "..Moderately Fouled-Up..".
Shorting is a legitimate practice (..which I have never done, because it equates to throwing rocks thru a factory window to me..) whereby an investor can bet against a company's success based on financial analysis, other DD, or bad news not yet discovered by the media/marketplace. When the Dot.Com IPOs rocketed into the stratosphere, I'm certain that the Greenspurt-sucking Old Boys Club on the STREET shorted them heavily on insider info that Greenspurt would trash them for "..irrational exhuberance,," in his next Congressional Babble-gram and then fork them over again with manipulated interest rates. They most likely made Billions on the Dot.Com demise.
In the latter case, if you were driving down the road and saw the primary warehouse for EBAY explode into flames - you could cellphone your broker and tell him to sell short (n)shares of EBAY. Then you could call Channel KXYZ and tell them to get a camera crew down to the EBAY warehouse for a possible Al Quaeda event. Once the resident blond, bobble-headed media twit blathered her totally ignorant suppositions regarding combustion engineering over the airwaves, you could exercise your short and make a profit. Kind of ratty, but it's done every day.
John :-)
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