You know what's interesting about watching these short squeeze events unfold? Everyone suddenly wants to know what Warren Buffett thinks about it. And honestly, the guy's been saying the same thing for decades about short selling.

Buffett has this pretty clear take: shorting stocks is just not worth the headache. Back in 2001, when people kept asking if he'd ever short obviously bad companies, he basically said the math doesn't work. "Everything we've ever thought about shorting worked out eventually," he explained, "but it's very painful. It's a whole lot easier to make money on the long side."

Here's the thing that really stuck with me. Buffett actually had a personal disaster with short selling back in 1954. He shorted a stock thinking he'd be right over 10 years. Turned out he was massively wrong after 10 weeks. His net worth was literally evaporating in real time. That's the kind of experience that teaches you something.

Charlie Munger, Berkshire's Vice-Chairman, put it even more bluntly. "Being short and seeing a promoter take the stock up is very irritating. It's not worth it to have that much irritation in your life." Like, why would you voluntarily sign up for that stress?

The real issue with short selling that Buffett keeps coming back to is the asymmetric risk. If you buy a stock at $20, you can lose $20. Maximum. Done. But if you short at $20, your potential loss is literally unlimited. The stock could go to $100, $200, $400. There's no ceiling. GameStop traders learned this the hard way when shorts got squeezed.

Buffett doesn't think short selling is evil or anything. He's actually kind of amused by the whole thing. He's said he'd happily lend Berkshire stock to anyone wanting to short it, just to collect the lending fees. "They're a certain future buyer," he joked. The man's confident enough in his companies that he sees short sellers as just another revenue stream.

But at the end of the day? Warren Buffett's position is simple. "It's a very tough way to make a living," he said. The risk-reward just doesn't make sense when you can make real money on the long side. That's why Berkshire has never made short selling part of its strategy, and that's probably why most serious investors stay away from it too.