I do not know about you. I just like to short stocks. I did very well in 2007 scalping the market ,averaging 40-50 round trip trades per day. Most of year 2007 saw a bull market. However, half of my profits were from the short trades. As far as I know, we do not have to pay interests for short positions as long as they are day trades.
I think that a scalping system is like a BB gun. BB guns are known for its accuracy and rapid firing due to its small caliber. Nevertheless you can shoot only flies with a BB gun for the same reason. Do not look down on the effects of a super accurate BB gun though. If your marksmanship is good, flies will pile up in front of you in no time. Swing trading is like a canon, very powerful yet less accurate. My marksmanship has deteriorated a lot since 2008. I had greased and put away my BB in a very secret place until a few weeks ago. Now,I have taken it out and re-greased it. It is still shiny as new. What it needs is a good shooter.
As ususal, I was looking for a short position today. And I found shld (Sears Holdings Corporation), which would have made a good short position if only I could short it. I also had a few other candidates. But Shld would have worked out the best. I left out one task this morning. That is to check with Tradestation what stocks are shortable. I remember I checked with TS last night and I saw that SHLD was shortable and It was not today though. Either my eyes lied to me or TS pulled shld off the list this morning. The shortable list changes every day.
Speaking of the shortable list, Tradstation has a staggering 8000 stocks that are shortable every day. We have around 17000 stocks listed on the US market. Some brokers are jokes when it comes to shorting. You need to check with your broker if it even publishes a shortable list every day. TradeStation,ThinkorSwim and Interactive Brokers all do.
Day 4 Of the automated trading experiment
The computer sent in a buy order right after the market open. SRS churned all day long. And it was stopped in the afternoon. So we have 2 losers in a row now. See the chart below.
Click on the image to have a better view
A BB Gun works best used in a choppy enviroement.
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