BR said (March 17, 2020):

Pros:
Is there a more available way than shorts to degrade QE to pants?

According to the standard economics theory, short-trading signals to the decision makers where the business heart and minds are, by means of putting its money where it hurts.

For example, short-trading can signal to Eurozone member-states, that the ECB is on the actual precipice, thus to make last preparations to jump ship ASAP and then exit on their own local laws.

Cons:

The act itself is immoral:
The immoral and insolvent aspect of short-trading is the selling of actual holdings of 3rd parties behind there backs,
in order to be able to profit from a falling market, i.e. repurchasing the same kind of holdings on a later date at a lower price.
The allocation of actors is immoral:
Another problem is the re-purposing of PhD Mathematics & Physics to this kind of financial casino,
while starving Western industries to mental death accordingly.

The victims are of the forbidden type:
The larger stake-holders, i.e. the pension-funds, cannot follow suit and short their holdings, because their tremendous volumes of stocks are going to annihilate the share-prices. This is how the piranhas beat the retirees to poverty.

Peter S said (March 17, 2020):

Short Selling, or profiting from the doom of others is one of the tactics of Vulture Capitalism. It is also a tactic in the dialectical Illuminati Banker financial market manipulation that goes hand in hand with illuminati clarion call; “ When there is blood in the streets, buy” Short-sellers , and those who profit from the doom of others, do it because they are in the loop with the illuminati Bankers. And they expect to buy back, when “The Blood Is In The Streets” Remember the Short Sellers during 9/11 who were too hot to handle by both the FBI, and CIA? This is Satanism! This is evil.

Dave B said (March 17, 2020):

One person bets heads the other bets tails

Sour grapes.
If we see other play the games better than we do, we too often get sad and mad.
The same rules, the same odds, the same possible insight into human nature. So some do better.
A zero sum everybody wins is not possible in the game of life. Not everyone can marry the highschool quarterback or head cheerleader.
Money doesn't care who has it.
And money is not only necessary but it more often let's the richer live better, longer, happier, more fulfilling lives. It one person has a million dollars and help others in a direction that makes them and their community better. Good. Fine. And they f another keeps his or speends it pin the community on themselves.. okay
I don't want to live and the heaven on earth rule- book communist society where we are forced to be equal.

Ray said (March 16, 2020):

I have learned, that I need money to live. & I don't live for money .

BTW there are no pockets in the shroud & no safe in the coffin ??

Andrew said (March 16, 2020):

How can it be immoral to balance your portfolio with some short positions when you know the market is overvalued?

Tony B said (March 16, 2020):

It's worse than what is mentioned.

"The market," so-called, lives on speculation. Speculation is a desire to enrich one's self on the labor of someone else who is thereby cheated from his fair reward for his labor and should be outlawed everywhere.

But it's also worse than that. Those who create and operate "the market" do it to accumulate capital from others in order to have an over sufficiency of capital which enables them to create massively profitable businesses at no cost to themselves, which a hard worker and saver who attempts to start a business can never in his lifetime meet and compete with.

Both are morally criminal as well as unnecessary in life. Moreover, they are the prime reason that everyone must think "money" in order to survive. Before such concentrations of capital money was not a necessity in life. Personal effort and hard work using a small amount of nature's bounty for one's family needs were the prime necessities.