this would be a a biizzaro version of the s&p500 index, that would track the poorest performing companies,,currencies and commodities obviously some effort would have to be made to find companies that were constantly performing poorly but had sufficient capital to continue to suffer for a number of years. e.g.,. Sears, radio shack (a few years ago) If such an index were to be conceived wise brokers could create inverse ETFs based on it that would make money as the companies declined.
-- bob, Feb 10 2015

Inverse etf of oil http://www.google.c...ZVIHoB8qejAKiv4CAAw
Example of Inverse ETF of a single commodity [bob, Feb 10 2015]

So, basically ETFs that sold short?
-- RayfordSteele, Feb 10 2015


Um, inverse index funds are widely known to exist. However, no one is able to consistently pick winners or losers.

For every large company that does a long slow slide, there are as many that figure out how to turn it around.
-- MechE, Feb 10 2015


What [MechE] said.
-- Voice, Feb 10 2015


Cassandra could not get anyone to listen to her, but if she were alive today she could just get fabulously weathly in the market. I am trying to think of a scenario where future events of some sort at varying temporal distances could be predicted with pinpoint accuracy, but with no possible way to profit at all.
-- bungston, Feb 10 2015


I reason that at any time, there are as many obvious losers as there are obvious winners, it follows that you should take advantage of both insights.

I know some companies turn things around, thats the very reason Im suggesting a "500"style rather than betting against a single entity in such a situation it wouldn't matter if one or two of the losers were on a verge of a comeback so long as the aggregate were losing. And of course, as losers turned into winners they would be removed from the fund and replaced with new failures.
-- bob, Feb 10 2015



random, halfbakery