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Strategies & Market Trends : Trader J's Inner Circle -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Poet who wrote (8904)	2/14/1999 3:13:00 PM
From: snerd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 56535

Poet... Thanks, I kinda figured that it wouldn't work very well trying to short through them. Just hate to not be able to trade for a few weeks while transfering my account to MB, is why I haven't changed yet. Snerd

To: Poet who wrote (8904)	2/14/1999 3:33:00 PM
From: zora	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 56535

Poet, I just checked the calendar and you're right it is Tuesday. I have not done shorts because I feel there is a great deal more risk to the trader. I use cybertrader which posts their short list ever morning before market. Cyber, while trading over the net, does not use a browser which I think speeds trades up and gives me better executions. Questions though..Since you are borrowing shares to short do you (1) pay interest on the amount shorted until you return them to the broker (2) always trade using margin dollars and (3) can the broker sell your shares if the price goes up and you don't have the money in your account to cover? TIA zora

To: Poet who wrote (8904)	2/14/1999 11:16:00 PM
From: Jon K.	Respond to of 56535

Poet, To all, Shorting stocks. Poet, I see that you're already a seasoned short investor. Hope to learn more from you. I am glad to see many good postings regarding shorting stock. As I said before, we cannot be successful in both bull and bear market if we ignore the valid investment tool. I didn't like the idea of short before, but lately I realize that shorters do help BALANCE the stock market. Also they prevent a stock to be over hyped. Let say a certain con man pump a junk penny stock to rise above $50, and when it crashes many innocent people will get badly hurt. (This sounds stupid but happens more than a few times a year). The shorters in someways help prevent these junk stocks to go past $5 to $10 level. Since the bad burn from shorting YHOO a few months ago, I was fortunate to be successful in most of the stocks that I shorted. Luckly I found some good teachers, too. I tend to do more DD before getting into short than long and I don't go into short unless I am sure the stock is up on hype. I'll share my simple methods of how I do my shortings. I predetermine how much I am going to spend on a particular stock. Let's say $10,000 on ABC stock, then I short $2500 on my first short and if the stock price goes up I short again $2,500 to $3000, and so on. The stock price usually falls down by the time I short second times. This way I have a reserve in case the price goes higher than I expected. I usually short on second day of stock "pop" with stock value that went up over 400 - 500% in less than a week. Finally, as Poet mentioned buy on the rumors and sell on the news or the actual event is usually a safe rule to follow. (Hmmm, since I am competing with everyone here, I shouldn't give out all these trade secretes...<g>) If you are really afraid of short because of unlimited possibility of loss, you could hedge yourself with buying a short term call option. (I don't like options so I don't use it - ten years ago, I lost a lot of money on options playing like gambling so I vow not to touch the option again. But if you do it right, option can be also a valuable investment tool) I think I rambled too much. I'd like to hear from other people's actual short experiences. jon