Friday, January 23, 2009

Having too much directional bias

Am I the only one who has trouble going long? I'm like Paul Giamatti in Sideways, "I am NOT drinking any Merlot!" but substitute drinking any Merlot with going long. That was a stretch, I know. I've heard that a lot of new traders have trouble shorting, but I have the opposite problem. The majority of my trades are shorts. I like how fast stocks can go down. When a stock goes up it pauses retraces, goes up some more, pauses. With a good short you are often in and out on one bar. I don't have any long overnight holdings (except for Motorola, don't ask) so that I can be market neutral, but I'm thinking about actually going long a token amount just so I can even out my bias. Short covering or not, if the market's making a move I should be in on it no matter which way it's going.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ditto to 'won't go long', 'easier to short' :)