Which term describes a type of investment strategy aimed at borrowing shares to sell them?

The term that describes a type of investment strategy aimed at borrowing shares to sell them is short selling. This strategy involves an investor borrowing shares of a stock that they do not own, selling them on the market with the expectation that the price will decline. If the price does fall, the investor can then buy the shares back at the lower price, return the borrowed shares, and pocket the difference as profit.

This approach is fundamentally based on the anticipation of a decrease in the stock's market price, making it a distinctly different strategy compared to others like equity investment, which focuses on purchasing shares to hold for potential appreciation, or long position investment, where an investor buys shares expecting them to increase in value over time. Market timing refers to the strategy of attempting to predict future market movements, which is not directly related to the act of borrowing shares for sale. Thus, short selling is particularly defined by the act of selling borrowed shares in the hopes of repurchasing them at a lower cost later.