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Strategies & Market Trends : Ask Vendit Off-Topic Questions -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Vendit™ who wrote (5967)	3/5/2005 4:53:04 PM
From: Walkingshadow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8752

<< Terry - you said that open short interest was low. Is that statistic updated daily? >> No. The Nasdaq reports short interest only once a month. Generally, the open short interest tends to be surprisingly constant. Stocks that are heavily shorted tend to remain so for months at a time, though the percentage may well fluctuate considerably. Likewise, stocks that are lightly shorted do not seem to change radically month to month. So in the case of AAPL, there are 30.7 million shares short as of Feb. 8, which was the last time Nasdaq reported short interest (they will report again this coming week). This was about the same as the prior month, which was 31.2 million shares. You can get this info from the Nasdaq site, but it is probably easier to just get it from Yahoo or similar sites: finance.yahoo.com I consider this amount of short interest insignificant, since AAPL generally trades around 34 million shares in an average session. IMHO, anything less than 3 or 4 days' trading volume represents insignificant chances of a short squeeze (or shorts taking profits) creating unusual buying pressure. So what does the tail below the real body mean in AAPL's chart? 139.142.147.218 Well, it is is possible that some of it was short covering. I suspect this because AAPL presented a rare shorting opportunity last week with "bad" news that was hyped up, and traders will of course take advantage of hype. So, much of Thursday's candle may have been shorts taking positions. Then, some of the shadow below Friday's candle might well have been these same traders closing positions before the weekend. Looking at the intraday chart, I notice AAPL descended very suddenly, which is typically seen when shorts are taking up their positions: 139.142.147.22 By the way, I didn't notice this before, but I called the bottom (the noon candle on the 5 minute chart) exactly on Thursday when Jill asked me: Message 21099247 Message 21098814 That call was mostly based upon volume analysis, but stochastics confirmed. T So.... I'd say you are right, that some of that shadow was shorts taking profits and closing out positions ahead of the weekend. Often however, I find it very difficult to tell when there is short covering as a stock trades down, or just buy limits/professional accumulation kicking in. ... all IMHO... T