Posts Tagged ‘Impatience’
A Short Seller’s Dozen: What Stocks Get Pumped, Must Come Down, Usually
VRML Short 1,300 @$3.75
LGDI
SUNV
Getting up bright and early, I reserved shares in all three of these stocks to possibly short today, not knowing which I’d actually short. LGDI didn’t even trade for 5 minutes and when it did, it moved slower than an under-cooked lobster. SUNV didn’t breach the key $1.20 level until the afternoon (when I had no trades left), so it was all about VRML.
I wanted to short into strength cuz it was a classic short covering rally from yesterday’s $1.75 pullback off the highs…given the magnitude of the declines and that it’s still up 300+% in a few days—on an ill-researched story thinking this near bankrupt company will do anything but go under—meant short sellers would be aggressive. Afraid I’d miss the probable pullback, I jumped the gun too early, shorting 1,300 shares at $3.75…as I watched it hang around $3.90 x $4 for another 30 min, I wasn’t very worried as the big buyer blocks were only on the bids—the wall of sellers at $4 never in danger of cracking—a clear sign of pumpers trying to scare up buyers/short covering…inevitably, the volume faded, the bids disappeared and the stock spent the day chomping gradually away at its early gains, few buy orders at the ask. I’d call it a perfect crack of sideways price action in the $3.60 range, but it still managed to finish up on the day, so it’ not totally perfect…just yet.
Despite my poor timing, I’ve got a nice $380 profit so far, I let it ride overnight cuz I think it goes under or around $3 today or tomorrow, possible big stop loss panic if it take out $3, might get to cover at $2.60-$2.75ish if I’m lucky.
VNDA
Nice gradual fade, but not my ideal PennyStocking short, too tight a chart/variables not fraudulent enough to squeeze one in
BDCO
Everyone’s goin crazy over an 18 cent gain, leme know when it gets to $3, until then jewwwww noooo
How I Screwed Up These Two Near-Perfect Calls To Sell Short
Take a look at my latest two trades—shorting 1,200 shares of probable-fraud spam-happy BSHF into a morning dip at $2.55 and 1,000 shares of failing business-so-let’s-float-a-takeover-rumor VM into a nasty slightly negative close yesterday at $4.01—both of which tanked 15%+ within a few hours of market action of my shorting. Great calls to be sure, but I somehow managed to screwed both up–and judging from the comments, I’m glad many of you guys did better!
Unfortunately, the BSHF pattern appeared the day before this new website went live and since it didn’t tank in the early morning EXACTLY like I wanted, I covered for a $75 loss since I had a million things to do to make the launch. Didn’t feel guilty about it until later in the day when it tanked 50 cents/share in a perfect representation of a spam stock falling apart! Sad sad sad, but one of those rare unavoidable situations.
If At First You Short A Pump And Dump And Succeed, Try, Try Again!
As I’ve posted HERE and HERE, EDEN was a great pump due to a 100% spike caused by a fluffy inaccurate article written by a major media outlet—my former employer—for a bit—TheStreet.com (they later corrected it, but the damage was already done). The first time I shorted at $2.55, impatiently/conservatively covering at $2.35 for a decent $180 profit. But given its tiny tiny tiny $6 million marketcap and annoying illiquidity, I don’t regret covering quickly…that much…cuz as I’ve shown on fellow microcap pump and dumpers PSTI, REED and SHZ, these suckers remain good shorts for many days.
So, when I re-shorted EDEN mid-day yesterday on a slight low volume bounce up from $2 to $2.20, I had every confidence in the world we’d see $2 again and then the question would be if there were stop losses there—as often happens at big fat round numbers. Despite some ever surprisingly determined buyers and a solidly bearish close at $2.04—caused by a 49,000 share sell order—I was even more confident of a big drop today.
When Timmayyy Is Dead Right: Manipulated Stocks Go Boom!
For the 3 most recently manipulated microcraps—CNOA (pumped by a CNBC “reporter” who mistook paid-for stock promotion for credible research, probly the result of majoring in theatre studies in college (seriously)), EDEN (agriculture product pumped by a TheStreet.com “journalist” who forgot to read the quarterly report mentioning they sold off that division!) and TIGR (I don’t wanna know the evil lurking behind that pump, possibly some SEC counter-intelligence subdivision trying to draw out fellow manipulators) I have been dead on. These are opportunities from which you can profit because I’m not talking about variables that indirectly affect stock prices (ie earnings, the economy)—no, these catalysts have a direct impact on the supply/demand of shares and consequently the stock price.
Since my expose when it was at $1.80ish, CNOA has dropped 30% in a few days—longs, don’t blame me or say “I don’t get it, it had all the trends going in its favor, I guess penny stocks really are just like gambling?!?!” Hello no, this kind of price action is the precise opposite of random, it’s motherf$#@en PennyStocking—learn to play the game or suffer the consequences!
Minimizing Trading Losses: Two Overnight Trades That Didn’t Go So Well
From a few days ago, just hadn’t gotten around to writing about it…as I mentioned HERE, I shorted 2,000 (KOG) at $2.75 near the market close when it cracked sideways price action so I thought it’d go negative on the day—I was right that it did go red, but I didn’t take my 10 cents/share gains cuz I wanted a big drop—not a pesky $180 profit. Unfortunately, I had a flight to catch the next morning…
Took a later flight to watch the market open—wasn’t comfortable at all since it opened above the sideways price action crack of $2.80, covered at $2.82, a $160 loss including commissions. Screw that, played I safe…I can take $160 losses all day long. Later in the day, it went decently red down to the $2.60 area, so I wasted $400, but when I play volatile stocks, I don’t worry about predicting every 10-20 cent move—I take my 20-50 cents-$1/share gains thinking stocks will make much larger swings (so I won’t have to be perfect in my timing) (such as THIS trade)
Three days later and KOG is still bouncing between $2.60 and $2.90, a clear sign that a big drop was never in the cards. So, my loss wasn’t that bad. Decent trade…glad to hear any of you timed it better and escaped with some profits!
Short Selling Penny Stocks: Decent Profits But The Mistakes Remain
Late Wednesday, when I posted this article predicting a 25% drop in (PSTI), I thought it’d be over and done with by Thursday. But that move didn’t complete itself til today, my baaaaaaaaaaaaaad!
Can’t believe I covered my short above $4, too much of a lil bitch to hold this sucka. Sure, hindsight is easy, but look at the eerily similar price action after the last spike…probly more downside Monday. How about this, I’ll just go on predicting, you guys handle the trading, deal? :)
Scanning The Horizon For Worthy Stock Trades
Thanks to (GE)’s pathetic excuse for a business, it’s stormy out there today! No new stocks on my radar today…lots of microcrap traders are playing (FRPT) and (MNKD)—TheLion.com’s all hopped up on them as if they were Mountain Dew. I like volatile low priced stocks just as much as the next guy–ok, maybe more–but not those of falling knives—their movements are based on rumors and speculation of further contracts/news…I hate trying to predict news…no I prefer predicting the effects of sketchy promoters and gullible suckers.
Speak of the devil..unfortunately, there’s no shares available to short of (PSTI) today—something tells me it’s gonna take the big dump under $4 today or Monday, but with my impatience there was little chance at me holding for a few days…as would be the correct course of action (as is usually the case aka you can do better than me!)
(COT) looks ripe for a big fall, at least down to $3, then it’s a question of whether or not it can take out stop losses there.
Easy Short Plays: Short Selling Hyped Up Failing But Spiking Biotechs The Sequel
Last night, I posted about how excited I was to short another failing biotech into a ridiculous penny-stock-promoter-fueled price spike. Just like the last time, I wanted a 25% drop in stock price, but I didn’t get that, the price action just didn’t play out as I wanted it to—a decent 8% drop, but no big freefall. I still made $180 today off my wrong thinking, so life could be worse.
After an initial 15 cent spike to $4.67—not scary at all cuz it was just one big buy 14k buy order (what is it with these guys, other one at $5 yesterday) that got taken out quickly—the question was could we take out multi-day support at $4.35-$4.40…most of the morning it couldn’t so I covered 700 of my 1,000 shares at $4.40, a disappointing 10 cent/share gain…then it bounced, then very gradually it declined, but still didn’t crack, so I covered my other 300 at $4.37, then gradually…so gradually…$4.35 got taken, then $4.31, $4.25—I re-shorted 1,000 at $4.25 looking for a domino type fallout from stop losses getting taken out there, then onto $4…
I Had A Rough Day aka No Playboy Centerfolds For Me :(
COIN’s $1 spike at the open makes me feel better about covering too early last week, gotta be careful with momo plays in this sneakily-emerging bull market. MALL and VVTV displayed the exact same kind of forced buying Thursday into the close, same dip afterhours, so I awoke early to reserve shares of each, fully expecting big drops growing bigger throughout the day (return to normalcy). No MALL available so my focus was on VVTV. Shorted 600 shares at $5.90-ish pre-market, didn’t want to take a full position in case of morning spike…at the open there was a wall of sellers at $5.90 so I doubled up, shorting 400 shares more at $5.87…20 min in, looking good at $5.70, but instead of taking my $175-ish in profits, I got greedy, rationalizing this should retrace all the way down to $5-$5.25…mistake #1
Overall market exploded upwards, stock held that important $5.70 level (mini-support from Thursday), broke through the wall at $5.90 (bad for shorts like me!), spiked to $6…I still held, thinking it was a multi-day holder—especially with earnings coming up and their tendency to screw up…back down to $5.90, but held…gotta cover when former resistance becomes support…I didn’t…mistake #2
Two Decent Trades Detailed aka Why Having A Quick Trigger Finger Can Be Good
When I shorted 2,500 shares of (KBX) at $1.79 yesterday morning, I had little idea it’d drop 20% over the next 24 hours. No, I shorted it because its chart had gone vertical—meaning it was close to peaking—it was the third big up day in a row and the price/volume had already begun to fade the day before.
Experience teaches me that it’s extremely difficult for a stock on that third day to finish green, let along up 10%+ because since it’s up soooo much sooooo quickly that buyers begin hesitating, wondering if they can buy in lower, longs start thinking about taking profits and short sellers like me begin wondering if we should pounce to take advantage of this natural cycle. So I took the morning strength as early short sellers getting squeezed, aka temporary.Unfortunately, the stock also had three negatives in my book—it’s a gold play—influenced by the price of the gold itself, aka not an ideal penny stock 
hype play, sure it’s gone up a lot but it’s only up from $1.25, aka not much more than 40 cents short-term downside and it’s on the AMEX—ridiculous price spreads between the buyers and sellers and market maker games.
And yet I shorted in the morning no less because a) the volume had faded substantially and b) sellers took out a big block of 15k at $1.79, I didn’t want to miss out on any sudden price collapse form it going green to red on the dayWithin minutes, I was up 5-7 cents on my short, but so what. The spread was ridiculous $1.72 x $1.77 so if I tried covering at the ask, I’d really only be up 2 cents. So I waited. A few minutes more and the stock bounced, but the volume remained weak and I was comforted by big sell blocks all in the $1.80, $1.81 and $1.82 range. Suddenly, a wave of selling hit, bringing the stock to $1.70 x $1.77. Ridiculous spread again.
I said to myself there’s only 4 hours left until the Fed comes out with some announcement that will influence the dollar and gold, would I want to stick around for that? Hell no, not in a less-than-ideal play that could also just keep going up gradually, squeezing shorts along the way like fellow $1 to $2 player MMTIF. So I put in a buy to cover order at $1.71, just above lots of big buy blocks at $1.70, the price that was resistance the day before (so theoretically should now be support).
Within seconds, I got my whole buy to cover order. I knew what that meant—it was going lower. Some market maker was glad to sell the shares I was buying at $1.71 because he probly had big sell orders that he knew would take out $1.70 and maybe more—considering then it’d be near unchanged for the day and probly go red.But I had my $180 profit, so I didn’t worry about it. It was a solid entry and exit and even though this stock continued to downtrend gradually until it really crashed to the $1.50 range as the Fed cut crushed gold prices meaning I basically left $500 in profits on the table, I was satisfied. Remember, I look for volatile stocks because since I KNOW my timing will be off, I just look to hop on and off along the way. Mission accomplished.
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