There is something mesmerizing about watching the old Shanghai stock ticker, particularly when the numbers keep inching down to around 3.5%. Yikes, it's been a tough few days. (I'm sure after everyone gets a nice hot lunch in them, the market will close much higher today.)

But there is a silver lining in that black cloud. If you are a pessimist, perhaps you have gone this route:

Exchange-traded fund manager ProShares last week launched the first ETFs geared to short international-stock indexes, including a fund that seeks to deliver twice the inverse, or opposite, daily return of Chinese stocks. <LINK>