Shorting is Anti-Investing

 I made a lot of mistakes, but I made one real doozy. So, this is kind of a funny story, at least it is 15 years later because the pain has subsided a little. But in 1999 after Yahoo and America Online had already gone up like tenfold, I got the bright idea at Soros to short internet stocks. And I put 200 million in them in about February and by mid-March the 200 million short I had, lost $600 million on, gotten completely beat up and was down like 15 percent on the year. And I was very proud of the fact that I never had a down year, and I thought well, I’m finished. - Stan Druckenmiller

Shorting has to be anti-investing as it is not providing any capital to grow and reinvest the profits. It is dumb. It is assymetric the wrong way with unlimted theoretical risk and limited upside. It is involving way too much emotion. It will not allow for taking advantage of riding out volatility and will put the portfolio at its whims. It will put the portfolio at risk as in "permanent loss of capital."

I should not do it. Yet here I am with TSLA and the airline shorts that have run way up. Expensive lesson. If Druckenmiller got burned with the 200mm and I think all 10 of those stocks that he had shorted eventually went bankrupt,what makes me think I am that lucky. I am nowhere as good.