As Muddy Waters will testify it is not easy being a short seller. Not only can it be extremely expensive and fatiguing fighting off company lawsuits, but the very regulators that are meant to be rooting out fraud and market manipulation by corporates often turn on the wrong target, witness BaFin and Wirecard and our colleagues Dan McCrum and Robert Smith at the FT. It can take years for your short trade to pay off, the costs of financing can be high, and, in the meantime, you could be scalped by Redditors or get stopped out before you are able to cash in. The meme stock frenzy last year caused less financial damage than reported, but the crazy volatility did see many abandon the strategy.