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.
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.
Normally you buy into something like SP500 via something like an ETF, something with a very low fee because it’s managed entirely automatically via simple algorithms.
How can you invest in SP500 minus TSLA without racking up exorbitant fees?
Unless such a fund already exists, you’d be managing it yourself and pretty much wiping out any gains any time you rebalanced.