"Tough to stomach being
short several dozen names"
What does that mean?
Otherwise, I do know what you mean. I was lucky enough to be in a couple of long trades on 1/03, but wasn't that far from having closed down a short trade for lack of movement. Saved by a trading rule, but not by much. Ever since, with the Nasdaq so heavily oversold, dancing round notional support levels, I've been taking profits on short sales fast, usually too fast - over and over, though of course that's easy to recognize in retrospect. Even when I do a two for one - take part-profits then tell myself to hold the other half on spec, maybe even overnight or longer - I end up closing the latter part out when things start to look even a little pre-spikey. Just don't see anything attractive or even stable enough out there to invite to my place for the night. In the meantime, have made as much in a few minutes on a handful of silver-platter long trades through all of this as on a ton of very carefully executed shorts. For me, these odd echoes of momo days gone by have been like the reverse of normal market conditions - with the shorts grinding away and needing room, but the longs happening fast and furious or not at all. I've been thinking the day I start giving the shorts enough room to play - that'll be THE DAY. Don't know if I'm trading scared or smart, or if scared is smart... |
