Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

Is short selling a good hedging strategy during overzealous market conditions?
Point of order: "What goes up must come down" refers to gravity of terrestrial objects below escape velocity and should not be generalized beyond its intent.  It's not true that stocks MUST come down just because they have gone up.  For example, we would not expecting the price of oil to come down to 1999 levels, right?  Prices, including those of stocks, are not necessarily cyclical. Anyway, short selling isn't necessarily a bad idea.  In some sense, it is insurance if you have a lot of assets (like maybe your human capital) that will take a dive when the market goes down.  Short selling would have lost a lot of money in your case as the stock market between 2011 (when you wrote the question) and 2014 (when I wrote this answer) performed very well.  On average the long side stock market should make money over long periods of time as compensation for risk and the short side should lose money, so it's not a good way to make money if you don't have an informational advantage.  Like all insurance, it protects you against certain calamities, but on average it costs you money.