, Columnist
Short Selling as a Business Model
Also Clarity, telemarketing, unicorns, Theranos, cartels and bowls.
Financialization.
Twelve years ago, my now-Bloomberg colleague Joe Weisenthal proposed that startups that planned to disrupt an established industry should short the stock of the incumbents in that industry. That way, if they were right -- if they were able to undercut big established public companies -- then they'd get rich as those public companies declined. Not coincidentally -- not, like, their business would grow as the incumbents' business shrinks -- but causally; their profits would come from the incumbents' shrinking.