It's easy for short sellers to forget what John Maynard Keynes said about 90 years ago.
“Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” -- John Maynard Keynes
I have never shorted any stock, although there were many cases in the past I later wished I did. Timing the market is hard.
The only thing close to shorting I did was to buy put options on Carnival and Marriott earlier this year. And I did that as a lark and did not put that much money into it, so the gain was small. I will even look up these trades to entertain you.
Carnival:
On 2/10/2020 bought 4 CCL July put contracts 37.5, paid $801.40
On 2/28/2020 sold 2 contracts, got $1579.27
On 5/5/2020 sold remaining 2 contracts, got $4599.20
Marriott:
On 3/3/2020 bought 2 MAR July put contracts 90, paid $740.70
On 5/5/2020 sold for $2459.25
The gains were not a lot of money, but it's of course fun to have. The above were the only time I made a bet on something going down. And my timing was not all that great, because I could have made a lot more money with the above options if I got out at a better time. The gains were minuscule compared to the loss on my long-term holdings during that market crash, so were nothing to gloat about.
PS. Oops, forgot that I have occasionally bought some bear ETFs in the past. Again, did it as a lark and did not make or lose that much money. Only a few hundred bucks of gain or loss each time. I will not bother to look that up.
PPS. I just realized that the above contracts on CCL and MAR just expired yesterday (7/17/2020). I stopped following these stocks after I closed out the trades. Had I still kept the Marriott contracts, would have lost all of my money because MAR recovered and closed at 91.48 on Friday. Heh heh heh...