Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

Can I profit from anticipating a drop in value?
To expand on the comment made by @NateEldredge, you're looking to take a short position.  A short position essentially functions as follows:  Here's the rub: you have unlimited loss potential.  Maybe you borrow a share and sell it at $10.  Maybe in a month you still haven't closed the position and now the share is trading at $1,000.  The share lender comes calling for their share and you have to close the position at $1,000 for a loss of $990.  Now what if it was $1,000,000 per share, etc. To avoid this unlimited loss risk, you can instead buy a put option contract.  In this situation you buy a contract that will expire at some point in the future for the right to sell a share of stock for $x.  You get to put that share on to someone else. If the underlying stock price were to instead rise above the put's exercise price, the put will expire worthless — but your loss is limited to the premium paid to acquire the put option contract. There are all sorts of advanced options trades sometimes including taking a short or long position in a security.  It's generally not advisable to undertake these sorts of trades until you're very comfortable with the mechanics of the contracts.  It's definitely not advisable to take an unhedged short position, either by borrowing someone else's share(s) to sell or selling an option (when you sell the option you take the risk), because of the unlimited loss potential described above.