Shorting a stock in effect means selling a stock you don’t own. The stock market derives price based on supply and demand. When more people are selling than people are buying, the stock price goes down. There are many more dynamics at play than this though. Often there are investment firms which will identify a price mismatch and attempt to price out the short sellers by buying and pushing the price up. This can trigger a short squeeze which makes the price suddenly pop.

IPOs are exciting times to be a trader, but individuals are largely in for the ride. They can’t move the market. If they identify one of these larger plays they can join the fun. Game Stop was one of the first examples of a consumer-driven play, and it scared the shit out of institutions because it upended their risk models.

A Short Sale position is actually a risk and if people know you’re doing it they will ride you to the bank by buying up as many shares as they can and force you to pay them when your deadline to repay the borrowed shares comes up.

WSB might be the butt of a lot of jokes but they have (in the past at least) analysts and insights that rival top investment firms, not reflecting of the average participants performance. A much more logical decision would be to inflate the price at launch and then when it reaches a critical state ride it (short sell) into the ground as it panic sells into penny stocks.

Not really no. It’s not often that a stock is short sold really hard when there isn’t an underlying reason Otherwise large investors could regognise this and just take a long position. The short seller is then screwed if the price doesn’t drop far enough and fast enough before their options expire