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How can a private investor feasibly do a fixed down-side, small-stakes shorting of Magic Leap? Hypothetically speaking.

You might be able to find someone to create a derivative on it. You would probably need a non-trivial amount of money to make it happen.

That's what I figured. I wish there was some SaaS-ish fund/Kickstarter where multiple small investors could go together for this kind of thing for a nominal fee.

That would probably get shut down pretty quickly, as it would be essentially allowing a group of small-time players to make non-sports-related proposition bets.

What would be wrong with that? People do it informally all the time.

Nothing, as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately the regulatory landscape disagrees.

How betting on the performance of a company is any different from betting on the performance of an athlete or a horse just boggles my mind. Sure, in the short term the variance is lower, but it's still a fucking gamble. It's also the only legal way to gamble in all 50 states.

Wrong? Nothing. It just tends to attract the attention of regulators when done at scale. Even Nevada doesn't allow casinos to run proposition bets on anything but sports.

UUUUUUH propose this to the SEC but don a flame retardant suit first...

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