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Sure. To benefit (eg; profit) from the drop in a stock one could or would do what?

Short the stock. SELL it first, then buy it at a cheaper price at a later time. It is exactly the same as “buy low, sell high” EXCEPT the “sell” comes before the “buy”.

Shorting stock has two certain peculiarities I won’t go into, but they do not work in your favor, and they can dangerous. And when you are underwater on a short it has an entirely different feel than being underwater on a buy, and it takes some degree of trading “maturity” to be able to handle the stomach butterflys that result.

But in the options market, one can buy a derivative known as a “put”, the contrary item to a “call”. Puts are very very counterintuitive for those unfamiliar. But because I BUY them, I am “long” and do not have those two dangers that shorting stock bears. I can lose my whole bet, for sure. If TGT rockets to 100 tomorrow on blowout earnings, the value of those puts would drop to maybe 25 CENTS, or $25, and it would happen before the bell so I wouldn’t be able to get to them in any way to prevent the loss. That would be over a 90% loss, kablam, right now. The options market opens AFTER the stk mkt, there is no “premarket” trading in (listed, which this is) options.

You buy a put when you buy homeowners insurance. You pay $1000 for your policy and should your $100K house burn down, your insurance company will pay you let’s say $75K for the smoldering ruin on your land. (that is one incomplete but not-inaccurate way to look at it) The ins co SELLS you the put.

Now, I anticipated a drop in TGTs price well before this current brouhaha, just as a matter of charting the stock. If you look at a chart, TGT has topped out right at 84 multiple times and can’t seem to go higher. So, my bet was that it would do so again. That the entire retail sector has been bludgeoned has helped, and that this controversy has erupted has, I assume, helped.

So I bought a put giving me the right to sell the stock for 82.5 up through ~~July 20. It cost me $2.70 or $270. and I bot 5 of them for $1300. I sold 2 of them for about 4.8 ($480) each and have 3 of them left. With the decline in price of the stock, those remaining puts have more than tripled, to about $9, or $900 each. Good trade.