Shorting stocks with IB

B

Bob111

This month was a nightmare for me. I trade 1-5 days swing and most of trades are shorts. I run a scan at evening, which give me list of candidates for tomorrow, then trade them. But only for this particular month I can't sell short about 50% of my setups. This rise a question-even if you have statistically proven system with expectancy more than 4, tested in 10 years of history data, thousands of trades-there is still no guarantee, that it will perform same way, simply because of you broker..damm...it looks more and more like a casino too me-you find a winning strategy-they not going to let you in. and of course-those trades bring big chunk of profits on paper later. According to my system-if i trade every signal it give me for this month-i suppose to be up about 35% up..heh..but i was down 10%. Because my broker did not let me enter into profitable trade.
All of those stocks having good volume, price and everything.. I can't understand, why, when I check it in TWS at 9PM-it shows that i can short it(stock on shortable list in IB website),but at 9:30AM next day-i can't..

Now-the question to fellow trades-is anyone have any experience with CFD's?
http://www.tradeatman.co.uk/cfd/default.cfm

To me it looks like a solution for this particular situation. Is it possible to find CFD broker with API?

Thank you!

sorry for my english-not my native language.
 
What you seem to say is that you got unlucky.

Is this really the case ? (just a question, not trying to be a smartaz).

When testing your 10 year historical, why don't you try to cancel trades randomly to simulate the fact that some of these trades won't be done in real time ? By doing so I suspect you may have a clearer idea of if you simply got unlucky as you suggest, or if your system is simply not robust enough.

My 2 cents...

(English's not my native language too !)
 
You should really find a broker with a large short list.

What I would do in your case is open up test accounts with brokers who claim to have a large short list and test them.

From my experience Datek used to allow me to short anything and everything. I mean unheard of stocks , stocks under 5.00. It was great. I don't know how they are now that ameritrade took over.

Stay away from firms clearing through pensen and computer clearing. They never had anything I usually wanted to short. Also , check out MB . They changed their clearing broker sometime ago and supposedly they have a good list....


Nick
 
Are you unable to short it because the stock is not available ?

Or....

Did you forget you can only short stocks on an uptick ...
Did you try to short on the offer ..... (and there were trades going of that were entered prior)

If the first scenario is true, I'd suggest you contact IB directly about this. Perhaps they have an explanation.
I must say, I've never had any problems shorting with IB due to unavailability.
 
Quote from spyderman:

I don't think these are high cap stocks!
More...
they all have average volume > 200K, above $5 .
when you trying to submit order-message pop up-"this stock you marked for short sales is not presently avialiable for borrow"
i'm not even talking about uptick or bid \ask

Thank you
 
What is the short interest in these stocks? If its above 10-20%, then thats the reason you can't short it.

IB is normally pretty good with short availability unless the stock has a large short interest, which includes alot of nasdaq high-flyers.
 
i'm with IB, and their short list - though better than nearly every other online broker - has been missing some of my 'key' reversal stocks recently.

i suspect this is because there are some short squeezes going on, or that's what i've noticed in the past.

also...IB's 'new' current list for the day seems to go up between 730 and 740 am EST. when i do my research the night before, i make a list of the stocks i'm looking to short, and then the next morning, go through the list at that time.
 
What I do in these situations is to get a bullet (not sure whether available through IB) and then sell the stock. Usually works, also for swing trades.

Oliver
 
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