There was a great website for stuff like you're asking. I forgot the name, but I'm sure babak remembers. As a moderator, I'm sure he'd be happy to assist you.
Yes, Fast Trader, I use the utility virtually every day. It gives you a different prespective. If you were thinking about going long something, it's probably not a bad idea to flip it over to see if it would be a good "short". And vise versa. I highly recommend it to anyone who isn't used to shorting and needs to view things as a "long". I did a column a while back on TM (when the bear market was in full force) where I flipped all my charts and say how "bullish" I was. It was the most poplular column I have ever written. Dave
Okay, here is another way to learn to short. It'll cost you about 10k but I promise you'll learn for life. Open up a futures account with around 10k. Go long only. Now every time you lose money, because it is a zero sum game, realize that someone "took" your money. Now visualize that person laughing as they put your hard earned money into their pocket. Do this a few times...I bet you'll learn before all of your 10k is gone. Dave
I think it would work ok. Do you have an IB account? I've attached a sample spreadsheet which might help you go about this. 1) input your stocks, numbers and buy or sell at the top of the sheet (a single "buy" or "sell" command will fill down to all of the stocks -- you can set each manually by simply typing "buy" or "sell" to the left of each stock individually). 2) save as a .csv file. 3) open the csv file in notepad and delete the buy/sell text. 4) use the basket trading feature to load your .csv file 5) trade your basket and save on commissions. I guess if you are trying to get into a position in a hurry (i.e. you spot an opportunity and need to jump on it right away), this won't work. But if you want to lump trades together and don't mind paying the spread, it's not a bad way to go because you save a little on commissions. As for the spread, you can also set up basket trades as limit orders, bracket orders and etc. You'll need to go through the tutorial on IB to get up to speed on all of that. Suggestion -- try the TWS demo and try this out a few times before going live with it. Best, Panther The road to wisdom is paved with platitudes.
1. avoid stocks w/ a large percentage of float owned by institutions and insiders. 2. avoid stocks w/ a high percentage of float currently held short (squeezage can be very painful). 3. And above all: Learn about the "sausage-dog experience"... When you're short and being squeezed hard it can feel like you've got a sausage crammed down your throat and hungry dog shoved up your ass! Those of us who've been there know the futility of "nice doggie" pleas!! dog
Panther, yes I trade through IB. Thanks for taking the time to put this together, but I get in various positions as I see them, so the basket order will not work for me. Regards. -FastTrader
Dave, have you ever had this happen where you saw a good opportunity to go Long and flipped it, and it looked like a good short? Sounds very odd to me. -FastTrader :eek: