Wednesday, November 7, 2007

SHORT!

I want capitalize on the current volatility.

Right now, my real-money portfolio is nearly 90% invested; I have some SPY puts, and then about 8 different stocks. I'm happy with all my positions right now, so I'm not really looking to actively trade that portfolio soon.

However, I just entered a trading competition sponsored by my university. Finally, I get to employ lots of risky strategies that I wouldn't do with my real money.

The competition opened today, and my first move was to short, short, short.

I shorted:
Apple
Bidu
AIG
Amazon.com
Google
RIMM
QQQQ
Petrochina
SPY
F

If the market continues to be sour (after the 3% loss on Nov. 7), the returns will be lucrative. All of the above stocks (except for the exchanges, F, and AIG) are high-growth momentum plays. If momentum stops, there's no telling where the floor will be.

Of course, I'm long stocks too (I'm about 1m more short than long in a $5m portfolio). I own:

BWLD
ANF
ATVI
TM
JAVA
and a few others that I'll update later.

Literally every stock, both long and short positions, fell today, but the shorted ones fell more, so I'm currently in the lead.... after the first day of trading.

As for my general take on the market:

It seems like there's a lot of reasons why there could be a correction now. The dollar is crashing, oil is still high, Morgan Stanley just wrote down $4B, WMU, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are under review for lending policies, and the market has just been strong lately.

Could the market rebound nicely tomorrow? Sure.
Could it fall 10% over the next two weeks? Believe it.

Predicting the market movement on a day-to-day basis is impossible and fruitless, so I cannot and will not say if the market will be up, down, or flat tomorrow.

But keep in mind that stocks like Apple, Google, and Baidu have P/Es that are 2 or more times higher than there rest of the market. When momentum runs out, it's a recipe for disaster stocks like those above. Google is itself a big enough entity to drag down the entire market; just keep an eye out for the potentially-dangerous situation that this can create.

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