Short-selling is a way to profit off of a company's fall. It sounds morally wrong, but it also allows someone to put their money where their mouth is and gamble on a company's loss, with the risk being that they lose money if the company ends up succeeding.

Of course, it creates a perverse incentive. A short-seller who is invested in a company's failure will spew tons of FUD around the company, whether it's true or not. TSLA used to be one of the most shorted companies on the market, and many bloggers that were highly critical of Tesla were short-sellers, and the noise it created made it difficult to figure out how bad the problems were.

> Seems like a way to gamble legally in all 50 states.

You could say the exact same about long positions, which is nothing more than gambling on the success of a company, the same way a short is a gamble on the failure.

Short selling is absurdly risky, but selling put options should probably remain allowed.

Probably? Selling short a put is long the stock.

I'm glad we aren't creating SEC rules based off of peoples' feelings.

Sure, I'm not lobbying the law to be changed on my feelings, but someone able to risk _infinity_ money in the hopes of a company's value decreasing does "feel" dangerous and wrong.

Incidentally affecting the market is not market manipulation...

Their incompetence is the direct cause of the tanking of a stock.

Even if it wasn't intentional, it was artificial.