Is it time to bet against the stock market?

March 8, 2026 — 5:00am

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When we think of investing, we typically think of numbers going up. Compound interest, return on investment – all these things are (usually) reliant on balances getting higher, rather than lower. In fact, numbers going down is, by and large, no good when it comes to making money.

But there are some cases where investments losing money can be a good thing. The most common is short selling, where investors seek to profit from markets declining by borrowing an asset from a lender, selling it on the open market, and then repurchasing it later at a lower price to return to the lender.

However, outside of movies like The Big Short, you rarely see or hear about investors making short bets. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, but it’s the sort of financial manoeuvre generally left to big hedge funds and the like, who have the capital to make profits off even small changes in the market.

Unpacking the new........

© The Sydney Morning Herald