alt Hacker News“Shorting” a company does not just mean short selling stock. Instead, it means having a short position, which you can use without unlimited downside.
The easy way is to buy puts. Maybe your next question is, “who is selling puts?” And that’s a good question, but you don’t really care, because you can buy your puts on the open market and when you do that, you get protection from credit risk.
There are other reasons why this isn’t a good idea but “unlimited downside” is not one of them.
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And puts are highly manipulated by MMs so you have to really study the chain and how it behaves before you have a chance to buy the contracts at a fair price. MMs will flood the market with contracts and devalue yours even when the price is moving in your direction. I highly suggest people think twice about trading options, they are best used as hedges for large positions during particularly vulnerable periods.
> “Shorting” a company does not just mean short selling stock. Instead, it means having a short position, which you can use without unlimited downside.
If you are an equity index holder anyway, simply by not holding any exposure in an otherwise "market" portfolio is a "short" relative to benchmark.
ie if I "buy" the SP500 constituents according to weight but with TSLA zero'd out my portfolio is essentially the same as long SP500 and short weigtht*TSLA.