How to make a bear market bearable

Jesse Livermore made $100 million in the Great Crash of 1929 by being short the market. Shorting, or borrowing stock and selling it in the expectation it can be bought back more cheaply later, was viewed as unpatriotic, and Livermore was pilloried in Congress.

Shorting is still regarded as verging on contemptible. You can't do it in government-regulated accounts like IRAs and 401(k)s. But it's still a great way to make money when everybody else is losing it -- and right now, a lot of us are losing it.