I think the inner boy in me's been yearning for some sort of outlet to let out my competitive streak for some time now. For a while, I managed to quench it by playing poker obsessively. Since the latter part of last year, I managed to divert some of that into a sad collection of DVDs (my collection extends somewhere into the 300-400 range... it's quite pathetic, actually).

Recently, I've started playing the stock market. Day trading and cyclical trading is not my thing; I found out being a "long" (betting on the is the most comfortable role for me.

One of the interesting things I've learned about the stock market is that there is an eternal battle being waged between the "shorts" and the "longs." The "shorts" are people who sell stock they don't have; they're betting the stock will decline in value (and then they'll buy the 'borrowed' stock back). Longs are people who buy a stock and hold it.

There's something about shorts that just irks me. It's just the concept that someone is betting on the decline of a company in such a big way.

The past few days, I had been ghosting a few finance message boards to see if two of my stocks were going to do well - I had done my due diligence research before and was confident they would do well in the long term, but being a beginner, I still had my doubts.

I could not believe the number of people who were openly calling for a stock to tank so they could profit from it. It was absolutely maddening.

In any case, today I woke up and saw both of my stocks had risen greatly over the past two days (both nearly posted 9% gains in the past two days).

I then found myself immensely enjoying the fact that the shorts were getting "squeezed" (basically they were losing a crapload of money and would have to cover their losses shortly). It almost got to a point where I wanted to trash-talk some of the shorters...

What is is about us guys that brings out this ugliness?

I take immense pleasure in watching shorts get squeezed ... I gloat as they scramble to cover margin calls. That'll teach them to try to profit off the misery of others.