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Non-Tech : Mr. Pink's triple pinky award scorecard. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sir Auric Goldfinger who wrote (83)	2/11/2002 8:17:37 PM
From: stockskeptic	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 96

I'm a new short. Got into it because I read "sold short" by Asensio and thought it was a great book and more importantly, that I could do this. Currently, I am short ACRT, EYPSF, GNTA, HDI, HEB, IDNX, INVN, MEDC, MXT, REFR, XMSR, and ZIXI. For me, these shorts fall into two different groups. In the case of HEB, IDNX, MEDC, REFR, and ZIXI, I can see by personal observation that the company in question is a good short. In the case of HDI, INVN, MXT, and XMSR, I am taking someone else's word for it. The other three fall somewhere in between. Anecdotally, it appears to me that Asensio, Mr. Pink, AAP, Bill Wexler, and Auric have strong short-selling records that it would be profitable for me to follow. However, being an analytical sort of guy, I want to have some quantifyable evidence that this is in fact the case. I must say that I am surprised by the hostile reception I am getting. Surely the core of shorting is that your research needs to be better than that of the longs. Equally surely, in order to maintain that advantage, one has to maintain one's objectivity. A rigorous, real-time (as opposed to retrospective) analysis of the strength of one's picks is a part of doing that. Merely because you don't like the person who is doing this, do you really have a quarrel with the idea of it, or with my support of that idea? The present discussion reminds me somewhat of a dilemma regularly faced by my sister, who is an evolutionary biologist. Like short-sellers, evolutionary biologists are frequently faced with criticism that has no basis in fact. Both groups also share a need to maintain healthy, rational internal skepticism and debate, rather than to unite against critics, thereby losing some of our objectivity.