If you go long $30 with 50,000 USD and it rises to $300, you will earn 450,000 USD.

But if you use the same 50,000 USD to go short on $ZEC , and it drops to $30, you only make 45,000 USD.

This is why I have always said: going long and short are not symmetrical games at all.

The upper limit for going long is infinite, while the upper limit for going short is 100%. ZEC's rise from 30 to 300 is a tenfold increase, while the drop from 300 to 30 is only a 90% decrease. This mathematical common sense is something that many people really do not understand.

So smart money is always going long on dips, rather than going short on highs. The yield ceiling for bottom fishing in a bear market is far higher than going short at the top of a bull market.

The biggest trap for retail investors is this: it makes you feel that going short is very safe at high levels and that going long is very dangerous at low levels. But the reality is the opposite; the risk of going short at high levels is unlimited, while going long at low levels is the true asymmetric return.

This also explains why Buffett said "Time is the friend of great companies": because great assets only have one direction in the long term.