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Strategies & Market Trends : DAYTRADING Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: OZ who wrote (752)	6/14/1999 8:13:00 PM
From: Eric P	Respond to of 18137

OZ: I spent the weekend reading every post on this thread ... Sounds like you had a very busy weekend! I'm not an expert on shorting, but I'll discuss what I know (shouldn't take long). Several things come to mind when considering shorting stocks: 1) Is the stock shortable? In short (no pun intended), the stock must be marginable (above $5) and available to be borrowed by your broker. Most brokers will have a 'short list' of available stocks. In addition, you can call your broker and request the ability to short a specific stock, and they will try to locate borrowable stocks in which to lend you for shorting purposes. Many daytrading firms use software that will automatically reject orders which try to short a non-shortable stock. 2) Is the stock on an 'uptick'? On the Nasdaq market, the uptick refers to the last change in the inside bid price of the stock. => I.e. for an uptick, the bid price of the stock is now higher than the previous value of the inside bid price of the stock. For exchange listed stocks (NYSE, AMEX), the uptick refers to whether the previous trade price of the stock is higher than it's previous trade price. (Somebody may need to help me with the fine details of NYSE shorting...) Anyway, upticks are important because in order to short a stock, the stock must be either be on an uptick, or you must be shorting at a price of 1/16 point above the inside bid of the stock. 3) Once you know the stock is shortable and the stock is on an uptick, you can place any sort of order to get a fill in the stock. You odds of getting filled on a Nasdaq order short be exactly the same as your odds of getting a sell-long order filled. On the NYSE/AMEX, however, your short order falls to the lowest priority of all sell orders for that stock at that price. This might cause additional difficulty in getting a fill with a limit order. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable with shorting (especially with NYSE) could provide us a more detailed explanations of the issues involved with shorting. -Eric

To: OZ who wrote (752)	6/14/1999 8:21:00 PM
From: TraderAlan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

Oz, Mine is real easy. Brown and Co workflow is terrible for short sales but availability has always been good. There's a human link in their workflow which slows down executions. So they are OK for limit short orders in slower liquid markets (but I primarily short only very liquid NYSE anyway). As a result, my shorts tend to be position trades and I haven't done many of those this year. BTW I generally hate limit orders of any kind and generally use them only in fast markets to avoid getting screwed. Alan