[take4]

Sorry, I don’t see your reasoning here.

I could’ve saw that the NASDAQ was in a bubble in January 2000 and shorted it.

My timing of the top would’ve obviously been off, and I could’ve gotten margin called and forcibly liquidated (with realized losses) by the time it was at peak in March 2000. That does not mean there was no dot-com bubble, just that you could lose hard shorting at the wrong time.

There are ways to avoid margin calls with options, but time would still be working against you with theta decay, so you could still lose money if your timing is off.