going short

I prefer shorting because the price falls much faster than it rises. (or maybe actually due to some kind of internal strange short bias??).

Price reacts to the downside faster probably due to how people will scale into a position, but then 'sell all!!" to exit quickly.

 

Any inherent long term bias is wrong in my opinion. Who cares where the market is going in a year or six months if it's going up today and tomorrow? Permabears miss out on bull moves, and money in the pocket is money in the pocket, regardless of whether the market is acting smart or stupid.

i go both ways with zero bias- i'm very short term but not a scalper. I dump 80% of my positions within 24 hours and hold the other 20%- the cream of the crop- for anywhere from days to weeks. All about taking what the market wants to give but not overstaying my welcome.

 

yessss!!!!!!!!!!!

(I thought I was the only one)

 

If you are focused on tech I don't blame you, in fact I'm right in there with ya. Bears are pretty much shootin' the lights out in that arena.

Aside from short tech wrecks, seems like all my long action has been in the old warhorse stocks and dull as dishwater names. Boring is beautiful these days.

 

Interesting perspective, I think I agree in general but disagree on a higher level.

If someone put a gun to my head and made me pick, I would rather be a bear if only because you rarely hear of a market melting "up"- there are few black mondays in reverse, especially now that greenspan has lost his mojo.

But the logic of being a contrarian runs deeper than the old cliche that the public is always wrong. When an opinion has fully run its course, it has used up all its force (hey, I'm a poet and I didn't know it). This is why the news organizations often signal the end of the move- by the time the move hits the mainstream, there are often no more bullets left in the gun.

I think true master traders don't give a flying flip about direction- they are as happy buying when there is blood in the streets as they are selling when tulips are $5,000 a bulb. It's all about finding the discrepancy and exploiting it, to paraphrase Livermore, with no more squeamishness or personal issues than a machine press.

 

I don't think your voting results give a true picture of the world. I would guess that 80% of respondents in a poll would be in the category of not having ever gone short and being afraid to do so.

I know that by the time people get around to trading futures, most people still take a long time to lose the long bias, so the numbers must be even higher with the general public of equities trader.

There's a joke in the business that the 1st broker who is able to get a retail trader to hold a short position in gold longer than 2 days wins the cumulative prize. (I think the prize is in the millions by now.) ; )

 

I think any trader who is not equally comfortable with holding long and short positions will not survive over the long haul. I always get a laugh looking on the Yahoo boards and seeing the "longs" fighting the "shorts".

my opinion, at any rate...

 

I'd have to agree, I was hoping for a little more honesty than was submitted. 90%+ traders around here equally comfortable w/ backhand and forehand? No way. But the skewness of the result says something loud and clear anway- that even in an "elite" forum there is a lot of self delusion walking around.

 

I missed the category that says "MORE comfortable Short than long" -

Stocks fall much more quickly than they rise, and I fully agree with the LOD (Long Only Disease).



Don