The best way to hedge a position depends on the stocks you currently hold in your portfolio. If most of the stocks in your portfolio are index stocks, it could be more efficient to hedge buy either shorting the index or buying a protective put against the index. The index you choose would depend on whether the stocks in your portfolio are mostly big cap blue chip stocks found in the Dow or S&P, tech stocks which are correlated with Nasdaq or small cap stocks in the Russell 2000 index. Another way is to buy a call option against VIX or one of the vix related ETFs when stocks in your portfolio starts to turn volatile. Volatility increases when market falls and your call option will increase in price.  Personally, I use a mix of the different strategies shared above.

I do not hedge against individual stocks because I do not have one or two stocks that forms the major part of my portfolio. Therefore, buying protective puts against all the individual stocks in my portfolio requires a lot of work and monitoring as my portfolio is spread across many different stocks.