shorting vs. being long

[bundlemaker]

Quote from hajimow:

how do you determine if a stock is generally not available to short?
I have an IB account and if I want to short e.g. "OSTK" and it says shares are not available to short, I won't try to short it through another broker that might have the shares. If I am so determined to short it, I do it though selling PUTs. Preferably I will try to find another stock.

I hope you mean buying puts, as selling them is akin to going long.

 

[andrasnm]

this poll defines the phenomenon of a majority usually is wrong.
intraday being short is maybe of equal risk but thanks to lady luck not all of us are daytraders....
longer term being short is harder in a upward bias stock market where they make a sport of gunning for shorts and squeezing them as a daytime hobby.

 

[EqtTrdr]

If long is wrong.. I don't want to be right$$$$


100% up room to go with absolutely no risk thanks to Bushy,Greenie,Abbey,Joey Batts and my man Cramer is sooooo awesome $$

 

[GGSAE]

For those of us who use a symetrical system there is not difference between going short or long. The same rules and methodologies are equally applied.

 

[murray t turtle]

Quote from traderich:

A co-worker and I had a heated debate over this very question.

He feels that shorting a stock is much riskier because you could actually lose much more than your initial investment and the most you could gain was limited to the stock going to zero.

I told him that shorting was no riskier other than the fact that 'in general' most stocks 'tend' to move higher in price over time.

Other than that, I told him that even if I shorted GOOG for example at 100, and hit my head snowboarding and was in a coma since that time that my broker would have issued a margin call on the short position and would have subsequently sold off to maintain 50% margin in my account.

He then said that brokers don't do that, and I said of course they do, and if they don't then you are not obligated to the short position beyond your initial investment.

And, I told him that even with GOOG going up like that, that did not make the short any riskier in general. I only lose in the short position because I kept it open and did not cover, just the same as if I had been long on the stock and it dropped and didn't sell it.

I think it is interesting how most people view shorting as so much riskier than being long.

Granted, I do think that the reason they call it 'short' ing is because most folks don't leave the short position open for a long time whereas longs are meant to hold for a long time.

Also, you do have to pay margin interest to short the borrowed stocks and must pay any dividends that come due as well.

I did short the the airlines in 03 and did well with that, but the only recent short I had was RIMM at 74 and DHB at 11.44.

=============
TraderRich;
Think/agree long airlines in 03,04,05 is generally more risky;
because airlines tend to be in a bear market. Did not vote in this poll.

However have to agree heatedly with your co-worker;
as a practical matter shorting a powerful uptrender like GOOG,
is more risky. only in theory does it seem to be as safe.

Hope this helps & when lending institutions sell collateral;
you friend maybe also hinting of ''collateral damage''

 

[traderich]

murray,

Have to dis-agree with you. Shorting is no more risky than betting that heads will come up vs. tails on the flip of a coin.

A stock may move up or down. Particular stocks may turn out to be very bad short candidates and some may be great ones.

Most people tend to be long on stocks because, as I said before, 'most stocks "tend" to move higher in price over time.

Maybe I can simplify my reasoning to you this way:

Let's take FNM as one to discuss:

It is currently trading at about $50/share. If I short the stock, I am hoping it will go down. How much, I don't know. Let's say I expect it to drop back down to say $46/share before I cover.

Yes, there is a chance it could gap up and I could take a hit. Yes, it can move up a few pennies at a time and eventually hit a price of say $54.

The argument that I could lose several times my initial investment of say $5000 (100 shares) is possible if I kept the short position open as FNM went from $50/share to $150/share. Yes, that is possible, and yes, the most I could gain from the short would be $50/share if FNM went to zero. Just because the stock going to $150 and also going to zero are two finite possibilites in the universe does not mean that my initial short position carry's significantly more risk. Especially if my price target is say a reasonable $46/share and not something obsurd like $0/share.

Your reasoning is akin to saying that betting on a coin landing on heads is riskier because the total possibilities include : heads, tails, and its edge. And yes a coin landing on its edge is 1 in a billion, so if I said that heads and tails were exactly likely then I guess I would be as wrong as saying shorting is not riskier than being long a stock.

I always find it amazing in the market that when a stock has finally hit its bottom, the short % is at or near its high point and vice versa. I thought you were suppose to short at the high and go long at the bottom? lmao.

have a good weekend. see ya guys in the market on Monday.

p.s. I had bought FNM at about 41.50 and sold off today for no particular reason. But, that does not mean I feel its a good short candidate either!

GM, DRL, FBC, and FBR are still my long spots.