These are some of my past big winners on the short side that I have had in my personal portfolio. Sadly, I will only be able to post around 20% of what I was short in 2000-2002 as almost everything I went short was an Internet stock or Computer related stock that does not exist anymore. Therefore, before the recent shorts become extinct, I will post my best shorts (not all) from November 2007 to April 2008 and then I will go back to posting the 2000-2002 shorts that still exist. Then we will hopefully be able to add my best shorts of the current 2008 bear market as I fully close them out. Almost all of the current shorts I have with huge gains still have not given full cover signals so hopefully that will come sooner rather than later. Bull markets can produce gains up to my personal best of 2,390% (TASR 03) but shorts can only return a gain of 99% and I don’t have too many up 90% but I do have a LOT up over 50% and I tell you what, and you can trust me on this, all you need is one of those in a bear market and all of your friends that lose 50% will be very envious of your 50% gain. You would be beating the market by 100% and there is nothing to be upset about that. Heck, if the stock market is going to zero, we might as well profit all the way there. If I can’t have my beautiful max green BOP charts then at least we can have our “beautiful” max red BOP charts. LOL. Enjoy these past big winners but more importantly study these chart patterns till they are BURNED into your brain. When you find these patterns, MOST of the time you will make a lot of money. However, nothing is EVER perfect and recently a “near-perfect” short setup appeared in CHD on 11-25-08 and failed two days later. So, just like with longs, and even more important when playing this side of the market, make sure you cover your losses VERY quickly when you are wrong. Those 50 and 200 day moving averages are there for a reason. Great luck everyone and I hope you learn a lot from these shorting lessons. We might be in for a period of a prolonged bear market. So these patterns are important to know.
-Joshua Hayes (11-29-08)
Dear Joshua,
Clear that you are “understaffed” and “overworked” (like most of us). But since these days shorting the market is probably a lot more useful and you probably have already done a number of long examples, it would be nice if you could also do a few shorties now before we reach the bottom, when the short examples probably won’t be immediately useful any more!
Thanks for considering this humble request!
Regards,
Lorenz F. (locanBBS)
I respect your request and promise to work on this starting this weekend. I will only use examples from November 07 to now. THEN WHEN TIME ALLOWS AGAIN, I will go over some 2000-2002 shorts. The main obstacle: 95% of the shorts I took in 00-02 were internet stocks like CLRS, ENGA, GLBX, and many others. They no longer exist and I can’t grab their chars so I better do this now before I can’t grab these.
Bottom line: I am overworked but this weekend I can find time and do this.
Thank you for the suggestion. I think this is a great time to do this and if not for your comment I wouldn’t have thought of doing this.
Thank you, Lorenz. Your request will be accepted by me. 🙂