system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: what shorting the market is.

My understanding is that it is betting against the market...
gpt
Normally you buy a stock because you expect its price to go up.

If you think a stock's price is going to go down, you can "short" the stock.  What this means is you borrow shares from someone, sell those shares, and then plan to buy them back once the price has fallen, in order to hand them back to the person who lent them to you.

So, yes, shorting is betting against that particular stock.