Thursday, October 9, 2008

My Shorts

Shorting Pigs Not Financials/Banks

I just read noobtrader's posts about his SPAR shorts this week. I too shorted SPAR and covered too soon. Shorted 10/2 at 3.39 and covered 10/7 at 3.02 thinking it might bounce off 3 the next day. Bad cover as it turns out. And out of line with the way I usually short piggy stocks. This does not include sectors like the financials/banks/insurance which are basically gambles right now.

If I had stuck to my normal lazy method (learned from Muddy, ha) I'd still be short SPAR as it sits at 2.67 today at the close. We normally just let them run down for awhile, usually no stress trades. LOOK FOR THE PIGS, not the newsy rollercoaster stocks. Yes, you can trade those if you are very experienced. I'm not.

BTW, what I mean by lazy is this.........Muddy and I traded JADE several times early in the year in the $4-5 range. Where is it now? 50 cents! Let em sink. They will. Choose the right ones and let them sink.

Now if we get a huge rally tomorrow, maybe these will run, but they won't run up like fin/banks. I'm up enough I can cover early and keep most of my profits.

All these short from last week, 9/30-10/3

CALC short 2.45 now 1.52 gain +38%
EFJI short 1.66 now 1.43 gain +14%
GRRF short 2.14 now 1.06 gain +50%

No reason to cover until I see green.

6 comments:

IL Torello said...

Just awesome Laura! Hmm I see...

IL Torello said...

Laura...thank you for all of your advice!

johnnyvento said...

pigs that short stocks will take exception to that remark

James Krieger said...

If you put lipstick on a pig stock it's still a pig stock

Anonymous said...

Old darkside watches that I wish I would have let ride:

CRXX, LAD

wow, they just keep falling when they fall, those pigs, yep yep.

ya'll have some great finds!!

Mike with a Prius said...

Just another couple examples...HTM darkside watch over 2, closed at 0.73 yesterday. MDTL was in the 3's when we were looking at it, hit 0.92 the other day. SYMX was over 5 when we were looking, now 2.65.