Friday, August 22, 2008

Newbie Update

Hey y'all!

So when I last left you, I had sweated out a weekend of holding a bunch of shorts (well, 3, to be precise)... and when I say 'sweated', I mean it! I thought I was going to have a heart attack. But I didn't... and now I can tell you the outcome of all that fretting!

So in my last posting, I told you that I had just shorted PMI, GWDC, and UPFC and was holding them over the weekend. FYI... my positions are usually in the $1,000 to $2,000 range.

PMI (shorted at $4.20):
On Monday, PMI dipped right at the end of the day and I covered 2/3 at $4.01 (that's all that got filled). I was a chicken and just wanted to get out of PMI without a loss. There's that impatience again!!! So, I made a tiny bit on that trade... about $40. Then, on Tuesday, I put a limit buy order in at $3.63. That hit sometime between 10 and 10:30 that morning... I netted about $90 on that trade. So, $130 on PMI... not great, but not bad. At least it was green!! But, if I had been patient, I could have made a whole lot more over the next day or two.

GWDC (shorted at $.15):
Watched this guy all week... and I was just positive it was going to go down. I mean... the news on this guy is just ridiculous!!! Management is trying really, really hard to get their June 30th financials out! I mean, come on! You just know that whatever comes out in their financials ain't gonna be pretty! But, by yesterday the volume was down to nothing. SSSSSSLLLLLLLOOOOOWWWWW as molasses. I was already up 30-some% and I was ready to get out. So, this morning before the market opened, I got onto my Schwab trading software to enter a buy order, and I see that the symbol has been changed to GWDCE (because this stupid company can't file their reports on time)... and the bid is .20, ask is .21. WHAT?!? Last night it was B .09, A .10! WTF is going on? Is there news? Nothing good that I could find. Finally the market opened and the B & A went back down to .09 / .10. Thank the lord for that. Just a mini heart attack this time! Anyway, I covered at .10 for a net gain of $370. I'm pretty happy with that.

UPFC (shorted at $3.95):
Watched this one all week too... and knew it had to go down eventually. But I was getting sick of waiting, especially after the low volume yesterday (and I thought GWDC was slow... this one was worse). So I covered at $3.46, netting $220 or so. And because I got out, UPFC then felt free to plummet down to $3.20 or so over the rest of the day... I had been the impediment (kinda like what happened with PMI too... once I cover, down they go!).

All in all, though, I have to say that I'm pretty happy with how this all turned out. I'm about 3 weeks into this shorting stuff and almost all of my trades have been profitable (13 out of 14). Oh, but that one that was not profitable was a doozy! I'll save that for another posting! Bottom line though is that I am in the green overall.

Holding a couple of short positions again for over the weekend: SOBM and BLD. Will let you know how that works out.

Feel free to leave comments, feedback, thoughts, etc.. And have a great weekend!

TTYL!

1 comment:

samy harmoush said...

Hey man. I'm also a newbie to short trading and besides on accidental cover order aftermarket.. Im in the green about 150 in profits.

Also holding BLD over the weekend.