Hi Lucretius Taurus; I left 30 shares of DELL short in my account over night today, I'm short at 63 5/8, so I'm up a stick. I seem to be doing pretty good with my longer term plays, and maybe in a month I'll start letting myself take home 100 shares instead of just 30. Apologies to the poor ISLD counterparty who got the partial fill of 30 shares, my trading house has a commission of about $1.50 on 30-share tickets, so it is a pretty cheap way for me to experiment.
Interesting market action when the Brazil rumor hit the market. I was long DELL and CSCO, and short MSFT at the beginning. Of course I got my butt kicked. DELL and CSCO tanked, but MSFT kept flat.
My conclusion: All the other daytraders were long DELL and CSCO, and short MSFT (and maybe INTC). The reason is that daytraders know to buy strong stocks, and short weak stocks. Then when the bad news came out, all the daytraders had to get out of their long positions, but left their short (or flat) positions alone. I ignored the news or was late getting it, so I got hit.
Later, when the rumor was denied, the strong Nasdaq stocks rebounded nicely. (I was on them, and made my loss back...)
I get the feeling that we should have a market top pretty soon now. I left 30 shares of INTC short last night, and covered for a profit today. I was planning to short DELL yesterday for a long-term (i.e. 1-day) hold, but I came to the chickened out when it looked so strong.
-- Carl |
