Shorting is not the only way to protect yourself from a bad investment.

You can simply not buy shares in companies you think are on a doomed trajectory.

That said, depending on the IPO target price, I might short it.

You say this as if retirement accounts, and S&P500 ETF’s don’t exist and aren’t very common. Many people were forced into some amount of investment in spacexsi

Which is beyond the point. I was replying to someone that mentioned shorting Anthropic if you think it is a bad investment.

I presume they are not playing with shorting with your retirement account?