I have a really stupid and dumb (or both) question about shorting a stock...

You are borrowing shares in hope to buy back at a later date (at a lower price) to turn a profit.

That's the simplest explanation.

To do so, you "sell short" a position, in stead of "buying long".

Have a stop.

Generally what's the round about fees on shorting?

From what I understand, say a stock is $100 today and you think it will go down to $50.

If you short the stock, someone "gives" it to you for you to do what you will in exchange for its value today. You sell it for $100 and have $100 cash in hand. When it goes down to $50, you buy it back for $50.
You give the stock back and you keep the difference ($50). You can only gain of the stock goes down.

If it goes up, you could potentially lose infinite money.

If you short it at $100 and it goes up to $150, you have to buy it back at $150 and you lose $50.

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Generally what's the round about fees on shorting?

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I'm charged a flat fee of $6.95 to short a stock up to 10,000 shares per order.

10,000 shares covers my needs just fine...

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If not the stock could take off on you in a split second and your fricked

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This happens in commodities trading with volatile contracts. I've seen a few limit down days in a row. Might be way past your stop loss.

I'd agree with geauxbears08 for the vast majority of investors. But with respect to shorting, part of the cost of the transaction is going to be the cost to borrow the shares. With respect to a stop, this isn't enough in my opinion, as no guaranty a stock won't open above your stop, and your stop won't adjust, or consequently execute. It could also quickly blow through the stop and not fill. One should be using some type of contingent order. Stops are extremely dangerous. If you can get execution guaranty with a contingent, you've just turned a theoretically unlimited loss into a maximum loss. Most of the time. If a price is blowing through quickly, and you have a contingent trade, if the contingency is hit and the buy is at market after the contingency is hit, the price still could be beyond what would be prudent at that point.

So I wouldn't short as there are other ways to do this. But I do short on rare occasions. But I understand everything I just typed here as well. I won't even get into MM's in a dramatic upward or downward price environment knocking through retail investors stops as a matter of course. I'm assuming the computers are programmed to look for this, and they do as well.

But hell, what do I know anyway?

I just have one thing to add. You are borrowing the shares in order to sell them short. It's happened several times to me that I placed the order and was told that there were no available shares to borrow. Obviously this is more of a problem with more thinly traded stocks.