[spoinkaroo]

So why not short the stock? You will likely have to wait until after the IPO and may pay an arm and a leg for the privilege with limited initial float, but it's entirely up to your discretion. Even more appealing if snapchat does well on the first day of trading.

[charlesdm]

The same reason you don't use margin if it costs you 10% per year: risk vs reward and potential upside.

[spoinkaroo]

If you are as confident as you sound you may want to pay the 10 % annualized to short some shares, especially if it pops after the IPO.

I tend to get annoyed when people have extremely overconfident predictions yet don't act on them. Just responding to your parent comment, it's hard to tell how bullish your actually are on SNAP from a brief paragraph. I'm bullish also but won't touch the thing unless it gets into territory similar to GPRO.

[charlesdm]

Not bullish at all on SNAP at current valuations. It needs to drop significantly (i.e. more like an $7-13bn valuation, with good growth, and preferably $700MM-1bn in revenue) before I will consider buying in.

There are plenty of stocks out there with sufficient potential upside that I don't need to use leverage (either by borrowing at high interest on margin, or by borrowing and shorting expensive shares). Borrowing at low interest rates I will consider, but probably only for stable dividend shares.

I'm 90% certain that this won't be a killer IPO, if you look back 2 years after it floats. But there are sufficient interesting companies out there for me not to care about how it does, either way. Just putting it on my 'to watch' list.

Edit: thoughts on GPRO and TWLO?

[spoinkaroo]

GPRO was egregiously expensive post-ipo but shorting the damn thing cost an arm and a leg. I haven't followed TWLO.