Friday, May 1, 2009

Short-Covering Rally Data Points

On March 9th I put together a portfolio of ten highly liquid stocks and ETFs that had extreme short interest positions. I posted about this portfolio the next morning in Short-Covering Driving Today’s Gains.

I thought this would be a good time to share the performance of these heavily shorted stocks and ETFs during the course of the past 7 ½ weeks. I have the graphics below from Finviz.com to show how the portfolio has performed. As a bond ETF, TLT probably should not be in the group, but since I included it in the original portfolio, I’m leaving it in here for now. For what it’s worth, removing TLT from the portfolio pushes the total return up to 116.60%. Clearly, a large part of the recent gains have come from short covering the likes of Deutsche Bank (DB), MGM Mirage (MGM), and shopping center REITs Macerich (MAC) and CBL & Associates (CBL).

[source: FINVIZ.com]

6 comments:

  1. Good for you. I want my money back. :)

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  2. Congrats Bill.. Nice gains.. Is this your real portfolio as well?

    Cheers,
    Pankaj

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  3. The Finviz portfolio was not a real money portfolio I put together, but I did use it for idea generation as well as a short squeeze barometer.

    I am generally very reticent about sharing specific trades I make (once in awhile I will mention something on Twitter), because I always envisioned the blog as more of a learning vehicle than something that might be construed as a source of stock tips.

    In any event, 2009 is off to an excellent start for me, for both long and short positions.

    Cheers and good trading,

    -Bill

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  4. after this huge rally the 200 day is 963 and the SPX is still a low 877.

    what a rally yet we're still below the 200 day.

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  5. COT data suggests the same

    http://alphaedge.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/cot-report-shows-rally-purely-short-covering/

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  6. Thanks for the heads up, AE. BTW, I checked out your blog and was very much impressed. It is definitely a candidate for my blogroll once I spend a little more time kicking the tires.

    Nice work!

    -Bill

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