Summary
In this chapter, we set the context for the rest of the book. The stock market is neither an art form nor a science. Market wizards are not born, nor do they need to be supremely intelligent. They are forged in the crucible of adversity. The stock market is an infinite, complex, random game. The only way to win this game is to stay in it, by adapting your strategy to the market's infinite, complex, random nature, and to pick stocks and cut losses accordingly. In the coming chapters, we will consider how to incorporate short selling into your trading strategy, and implement techniques to improve your success rate and gain expectancy.
Market participants are generally less comfortable selling short than buying long. This is down to a number of technical factors, but also because of a general fear of the practice, propagated by the number of myths related to short selling. We will discuss and disprove these in the next chapter.
