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Non-Tech : Auric Goldfinger's Short List -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sir Auric Goldfinger who wrote (5026)	4/16/2000 5:41:00 AM
From: Mike Petriv	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19428

I've always been a short and on occasion a long, but strictly for technical reasons. I've been getting a bit ballsy lately, shorting into companies with earnings releases. Most recently: EGRP- daytrader longs going broke and the last quarter is the best they will ever have; SUNW- 90% of the dot.bom companies will go broke and the phenomenal growth will slow; just scalping a few points to satisfy my ego. In retrospect it is fairly easy to see what happened over the last two weeks: on the Tuesday when the market tried to crash (the dress rehearsal for the week just passed) daytraders bought the dip and margined up in an attempt to recover their losses (the longs are right until their wrong, and then they're really wrong). The next three days the NASDAQ rose on light volume encountering overhead resistance from smarter and more desperate longs. On Monday, some could see that that the emperor had no clothes and by Friday even the blind could see. For the week ahead I see further carnage as margin calls lead to distress selling and complete capitulation. The final act will come when someone says growth in the expansion of the internet and telecommunications is beginning to slow; this will take down the mightiest of the mighty. This will be followed by recession and cash will be king. In the end, reason will have triumphed over faith, reality over mysticism, and Rand and Greenspan will have been vindicated.

To: Sir Auric Goldfinger who wrote (5026)	4/16/2000 2:04:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19428

Auric, thanks so much for your comprehensive answers to a newbie's questions. But, as always, that leads to yet new questions. <g> You say: The trick is to watch the liquidty in terms of volume, bid/ask spreads, average size transacted as well as the number of active market makers in the stock, among other things. At any given time of day, Yahoo, for example, provides current data on the above (except for the "active market makers"). But I gather you are talking about tracking the data, on an ongoing basis throughout the day/week. Wouldn't I need some fancy trading software program to do that? If so, which? And now for a question that really shows my ignorance! (Remember, you are dealing with a reformed buy-and-hold investor type.) What exactly are <gulp!> "active market makers"? And how do you track them? Can you recommend some good reading material on the subject of shorting? I have ordered (through Amazon, which I haven't the heart to short, although it "deserves" it) Kathyrn Staley's book, The Art of Short Selling. I gather it is terribly out of date, even though it was published only three years ago. But there does not appear to be anything else. I know a greenhorn like myself, under normal circumstances, should wait to learn a little more before plunging into the uncertain seas of shorting. But these are not normal circumstances, and it is not in my nature to sit calmly and watch, without fighting back, while my long investments (none of which are no-goodniks, by the way) sink beneath those very same seas. jbe