June 15, 2011 - With the market finally taking a breather from its seemingly endless downward spiral (6 weeks and counting), some investors may want to try something new, something like "shorting" a stock. Many have heard about this worthy effort, but few know the details on what it really means. The first thing it means is that you can lose an infinite (truly infinite) amount of money. So tread cautiously.

The first rule is that the stock has to be sold on an uptick. That means, you can't just go in and hit the bid and sell the stock. If you could do that, you could short it continuously until you drive it to almost zero, then buy it back and make a lot of money. So the stock has to trade up before it can be sold short.

Let's say you've shorted your stoc