How can one go short in Uber?
The answer to this question is related to another question: How would I invest in Uber? Given that Uber is a privately-held company, the average investor cannot directly buy stock.  However, there are some indirect methods that you can use to invest in Uber, and as a result, it is also possible to indirectly short Uber. One method is to invest in (or short) companies that invest in Uber.  Alphabet/Google (GOOG) owns some, as well as Microsoft (MSFT), Toyota (ADR), and other companies.  Theoretically, you could short these companies, as a hit to Uber would be bad for those companies. Another method would be to look at Uber's competitors.  Think about what companies would do well if Uber went under.  Lyft, perhaps, although it is so similar to Uber that if one has trouble, the other may as well.  Perhaps instead you might invest in a traditional taxi company, or a company that provides services to taxi companies, such as Medallion Financial Corporation (MFIN). Keep in mind that either investing or shorting any of these is not really the same as investing/shorting Uber.  It provides you some exposure in Uber, but your investment is also affected by many other things that have nothing to do with Uber. For more information, see the Investopedia article Ways to Invest in Uber before It Goes Public. For the record, I don't recommend that you do any of this. "Pay someone a fee to borrow their private Uber shares, then sell those private shares to someone else, then find someone else you can buy their private shares from for less than the net of the proceeds you made selling the borrowed shares you sold plus the fees you've paid to the first person and return your newly purchased shares back to the person you initially borrowed the shares from. On a serious note, Uber is private; there is no liquid public market for the shares so there is no mechanism to short the company.  The valuations you see might not even be legitimate because the company's financials are not public.  You could try to short a proxy for Uber but to my knowledge there is no public ""rideshare""/taxi service business similar enough to Uber to be a reasonably legitimate proxy."
&gt;Yes. The lack of insight and superficial treatment of the subject...  I am sure if you were a bit more specific in your first post it would have been more helpful. That remark left me wondering if you were attacking the author.   Anyway I think he made a few points clear though I felt the article missed a vital insight: *Uber doesn't have a sustainable competitive advantage in the long run.* They have been competing on price to beat Lyft that's why they had to resort to this cheap tactic. The illegal business model is a mere symptom. While I am not an advocate of shorting anything (unlimited downside, capped upside), you can: Adding to the answers above, there is another source of risk: if one of the companies you are short receives a bid to be purchased by another company, the price will most probably rocket... -Most investors would be insulated against losses through diversified portfolios. -Uber's staff would lose their stock options, and along with drivers, would face unemployment. -Other services would grow to meet consumer demands.  I don't mean to be rude, but these answers are so obvious, this article is one step above clickbait. "Diversify into leveraged short/bear ETFs and then you can quit your job and yell at your boss ""F you I'm short your house!"" edit: this is a quote from Greg Lippmann and mentioned in the book ""The Big Short""" "As ChrisInEdmonton describes, shorting has an asymmetric risk/reward ratio. And put options have a time cost, if you think the market is overvalued and buy lots of puts, but they expire before the market finally corrects, you can lose your entire investment.  Betting on market timing of any kind is extremely difficult to do, some would argue it's impossible. ""The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"" is a favorite wall street trader saying. Instead of playing a game that's difficult to win, the better option is to play one you can win. That's to learn how to value individual investments well and accumulate cash until you can find investments that are under-valued to invest in. The best way to learn to value investments is to read Graham and Buffett. ""The Intelligent Investor"" is a good starting point, and you can read all of Buffett's investor letters for the last 30 years + for free on the Berkshire Hathaway web site. Finally the textbook on valuing stocks and other investments is ""Securities Analysis"" the 6th edition is only version to get, it was updated with Buffett and other leading value investors oversight. A basic overview of valuing investments is that every investment has an ""intrinsic value"" consisting of it's future cash flows, discounted for the time it takes to receive them. The skill is being able to estimate how likely those cash flows are to happen. a) Is it a good business? Does it have a moat, i.e. barriers that make it hard for competitors to duplicate it? b) Will management invest or distribute those cash flows wisely? Then your strategy is to not even worry about the market, spend your time looking at individual stocks and investments and wait until some come along that's well undervalued. That may be during a market correction, or it may be tomorrow. And it's not just good enough to intelligently value your investments, you also have to have psychological fortitude to not panic and to think for yourself. Buffett describes it best. Ben Graham, my friend and teacher, long ago described the mental attitude toward market fluctuations that I believe to be most conducive to investment success. He said that you should imagine market quotations as coming from a remarkably accommodating fellow named Mr. Market who is your partner in a private business. Without fail, Mr. Market appears daily and names a price at which he will either buy your interest or sell you his. Even though the business that the two of you own may have economic characteristics that are stable, Mr. Market’s quotations will be anything but. For, sad to say, the poor fellow has incurable emotional problems. At times he feels euphoric and can see only the favorable factors affecting the business. When in that mood, he names a very high buy-sell price because he fears that you will snap up his interest and rob him of imminent gains. At other times he is depressed and can see nothing but trouble ahead for both the business and the world. On these occasions he will name a very low price, since he is terrified that you will unload your interest on him. Mr. Market has another endearing characteristic: He doesn’t mind being ignored. If his quotation is uninteresting to you today, he will be back with a new one tomorrow. Transactions are strictly at your option. Under these conditions, the more manic-depressive his behavior, the better for you. But, like Cinderella at the ball, you must heed one warning or everything will turn into pumpkins and mice: Mr. Market is there to serve you, not to guide you. It is his pocketbook, not his wisdom, that you will find useful. If he shows up some day in a particularly foolish mood, you are free to ignore him or to take advantage of him, but it will be disastrous if you fall under his influence. Indeed, if you aren’t certain that you understand and can value your business far better than Mr. Market, you don’t belong in the game. Lastly learning to value investments isn't just useful in the stock market, they are applicable to investing in any investment such as bonds, real estate, and even buying your home or running a business." If the rules are unfair,stupid and causing more harm than good.... I'd argue the opposite.  Taxi companies regulated themselves into a protected business with no competition and no chance of competition. This hinders customers and puts all the power into the hands of the cab companies.  I'm not saying Uber is in the right with everything, but your not gonna see an ounce of sympathy from Me towards the cab companies and the cities that let that shit happen. The taxi industry operates differently in every jurisdiction. I live in Vancouver BC and the taxi business here is archaic (think transportation before deregulation) so I would welcome Uber as an alternative.   There is a reason a license to operate a cab in Vancouver is worth $500,000+ each. Monopolies, bitch. I don't know if vanilla beans are traded on any organized exchange, and if they are, it's probably extremely obscure and very hard to access without having both of a lot of money and in-country connections.  Edit: no, they're not. So there is no real way to short them.  https://www.ft.com/content/e0e2fc16-28db-11e7-bc4b-5528796fe35c?mhq5j=e2 I really appreciate the long response! You clearly have more knowledge than me in regards to the finance end of the business. That said, is there so much money/debt tied up in taxi licenses and medallions that it would create even a mini financial market crash?  If so, how would we (investors) profit from the situation? "&gt; They trick people into rigged contracts, which requires paying uber even if you quit. So your time spent making money at another job belongs to uber.  Can you link me to some info on this? This is bizarre.  &gt;What makes it ""sort of"" slavery is the foolishness of entering the contract.  lol" "There are multiple problems with your claim. Firstly, in some places Uber and Lyft *are* regulated. In California, they are regulated as [Transportation Network Companies](http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/Enforcement/TNC/TNC_Licenses_Issued.htm). Secondly, I don't think this particular practice (calling in fake rides) is something that is prohibited by regulations, or at least enforced, for existing industries like taxis and livery cars. I have heard anecdotes that taxi companies routinely do the same thing, and that this is why taxis often don't show up if you call and request one. I think your attribution of this practice to ""unregulated capitalism"" is misguided." Yeah, too subjective of a question I shorted BP last year during the deep water crisis, using a leveraged account 20 times larger than the amount of cash I actually had, instantly profitable. I was long Freddie Mac in March 2009 and that took several months to turn to move and turned a 100% gain I've flipped penny stocks trading at .0001 cents, bought a few million shares and sold them at .0002 cents. Sometimes instantly, sometimes over several months because they were illiquid I'm primarily a derivatives trader right now, which I did not know about or understand less than a year ago. Dont have crazy targets, that how you will blow up your account. Have meticulously calculated plans. Also you need to determine what kind of trader you are. I don't have a smartphone, so when I was in San Francisco, I used a cab driver.  He was really friendly, took me to where I needed to go and I called him back the next day to take me to the airport.  He said that he was going to protest at the state capital against Uber with some of this fellow drivers.  He said that they didn't require any sort of driving tests or insurance, and that made them extremely unsafe and unfair.  I'm all for disruptive business models, but I'm really unsure what separates these people from traditional taxi companies other than having a cool app.  They may live and die with regulations. &gt; A short position also loses money if the stock just appreciates more slowly than the broader market, which is one way an overvaluation can correct itself.  Is there a derivative based on the literal second derivative (acceleration) of the stock price? If so, you'd be able to short those, yes?