Shorting Spree

I remembered the first time I shorted a stock. That was two months into my full time trading journey and funnily it was done out of frustration of not knowing how to short when I'm seeing red everywhere. I searched online for a while but it seems nobody was telling me how to go about shorting a stock so I just had to do it for myself. 

I thought that ACCICB would be the first to short and then I can learn from him how to do it properly but it seems this time I was the garang one as I took a loss on the long position and shorted it instead since I can't hold both short and long positions in IB. The trade ended well and I took a small profit. 

My only mistake was that when I closed my short position, I should have long the stock again as it went up. But being a first timer and not knowing what buttons to press to close the short position, I was fumbling but happy that it ended well.

That was the start of my shorting career and it seems to sit well on me since gravity is working for me rather than against me. ACCICB called me a gangster for becoming a short seller and I thought to myself that short selling has its place in the market because truth be told, nothing can go up forever. 

It's like climbing up to the top of the mountain and once you reach the peak, you have to come down unless you plan on living up there which we know is plain impossible. In recent days, it seems that shorting sprees are growing and the only thing that can cause a stock to break out of the market is earnings day. 

But then your earnings better be damn freaking fantastic before you can break out of the market downtrend and register a strong white candle which would probably only last a day or two before it gets swallowed up by the market again. This is what happens when the market is in gear when you see chart patterns all over the world repeating themselves in different markets. 

Once the market is out of gear is the time where things start to get interesting and it seems that the market is trying to do that...whether it succeeds or not awaits to be seen. 

Comments

  1. Singapore Man of LeisureSeptember 3, 2015 at 6:22 PM

    Joyce,

    Eh?

    From AV fetish idol to Greek Goddess?

    From Investor to Trader?

    You go girl!

    Wow! You are good!

    I've a mental block I've yet to overcome.

    If I'm bearish and have a short position, the best I can do is to cover my shorts if I sense the market is due for a bounce,

    I'll wait for the bounce to exhaust itself before going short again.

    I can't do the short, cover; long, cover; short again trades :(

    I did that once with USD/JPY and I was stopped-out all 3 times!!!??

    Took me weeks before I recovered from my shell-shock... It totally destroyed my confidence :(

    LOL!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Joyce LeongSeptember 3, 2015 at 6:39 PM

      Hi SMOL,

      Somebody tried to hijack my profile on Facebook so decided that I should change my blog name. I think the best way is to make money long and short the same stock because the stop loss is in my mind and written down rather than keyed into my order. Plus if you are right, it means that you know when the market is turning...;)

      Delete
  2. AnonymousSeptember 5, 2015 at 12:20 AM

    Next week, you would be able to short many stocks all around the world.

    ReplyDelete

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