How does the broker benefit from shorting stock?

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: gbd Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/137359 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. As I understand it, shorting works by borrowing stocks from someone (usually a broker). Then you sell those stocks to someone else. Later if the price of stock goes down, you buy the stocks at cheaper price to return them to the broker. And this is how you make money. Of course you would lose money if the price of the stock goes up. But what I don't understand is what benefit does the other side (the broker) get from lending you their stocks. It seems to me that they would of made the same loss or profit either way if they had held to their stock.