Why do people always look to 'buy', not to 'sell'???!!

Well I love to short because you can make a lot of money but lately for me it's been hard. Every time I've shorted we've had a strong ralley. The times I've shorted the rallies they've hit my stop losses so right now I'm kind of frustrated with the market. To many factors affecting the market that are not the market.
 
Most, if not all, of the "shorts" were wiped out in the tech bubble...

The few who survied were then killed shorting GOOG at $100, LOL......


Also, the future does not look good for shorting....much more enforcement....brokers will get caught and slapped big time...


SteveD
 
Quote from SteveD:

Most, if not all, of the "shorts" were wiped out in the tech bubble...

The few who survied were then killed shorting GOOG at $100, LOL......


Also, the future does not look good for shorting....much more enforcement....brokers will get caught and slapped big time...


SteveD

That is not true at all. People that play on the downside for fundamental reasons do get killed. If you play on the downside on technicals letting markets show you a weakness (instead of trying to force one on the markets) you can do it.
 
Most "shorts" in the 90's did so off of fundamentals.....PE too high....all of the "dot com" companies were obvious shorts....in hindsight, LOL.....

A lot of very smart people were wiped out shorting in the runup of the bubble.....even a NYSE specialist firm.....


Most traders did not have the technical tools and computer power/data we have today.....they were doing if off of fundamentals.....

SteveD
 
Quote from ProfitTakgFool:

I asked one of my college professors this very question a few years ago and he kindly pointed out to me that the stock market had basically gone straight up since WWII. I said, "Oh." He had a great point. Why wouldn't you want to buy when the market basically goes up over time. The market expands much more frequently than it contracts so I suspect people get conditioned. Few people even understand the basic concept of selling short. I've explained it until I'm blue in the face to the average investor and you still get that deer in headlights look.

By "market" he probably referred to an index. If that is the case, you have to take into consideration "survival bias" - indexes change over time. "Bad" stocks are thrown out and "good" ones are added in. If you also take into account inflation, than things don't look that rosy.
 
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