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Non-Tech : Waterhouse Securities -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rrufff who wrote (1290)	4/30/1999 6:56:00 PM
From: James F. Hopkins	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2076

rruff; There are others who can explain it better than I can, what you can do and can't do shorting is often up to the broker and how long you have been with them, while I hashed mine out and can do 2x my equity on shorts they may not let a new person do that, and in some cases may extend it to others. My shorts take 50% of equity (Deposit) and it must be in my margin account ..10K lets me short 20k , however they have the rights to change that , my longs are also 50% , but 10k only lets me buy 10K more. -------------------- I only short indexes via spiders , so I don't risk getting caught in a short squeeze on a stock as they can be killers the spiders will track the "basket" (fairly close) they don't just jack them Up , however it can be hard to borrow shares once the market starts down ( I was not able to get any yesterday or today ) or so they told me. They are easy to get if market is moving up. The next Time I go long one I may not just sell it , but wait for the market to turn, and go against the box, the disadvantage of that is the money represented by the stock, is not spendable on one that may be going up. --------------- Like I normally exit one that's just hanging to buy another moving up & then come back to short it, the effect is if I short against the box my buying power is reduced sort of by proxy. But If I was shorting stocks ( & not indexes ) then I think against the box is the safest way as a squeeze can't bite me , also in the event the stock pays dividends while I'm short I'm not paying them to someone else. So far I've avoided shorting stocks, but may explore that some on stuff I'd like to keep longer term but avoid being long on days like today, and not being able to get any thing to short. As for your questions I'm sure there are others on the thread that can answer them better than I can. Jim