Bookkeeping: Covering Volcano (VOLC) Short

I am going to cover the short we started Tuesday on Volcano (VOLC) with about a 6% gain. [Jan 13: Bookkeeping - Short Volcano] We sold short in the $14.60s and I'm covering here in the $13.80s. I was hoping for more ($13 would of been nice) but for how bad the market has been the past two days it has actually held up "ok". Basically I made only a bit more than I could of shorting the general market. I would treat this differently if we were in a sideways market but I fear a potential snap back rally after such a bad week and a half so I am not going to be greedy. I'll rejoin this position if it can get back to $15 or so, as we have a very low risk short entry up there.

Again, go forward our shorting will be of 2 kinds - (a) individual names on technical merit (such as this) with a short time frame and (b) themes (REITs, retailers, and the like) with a longer time frame. I'd include financials in that latter group but within a month or two there might not be any publicly traded ones left to short ;)

At this point I'd love to see the market jump about 4-7% in the next week (Obama soon arrives!) where I can build a book of 8-10 shorts. In the new tracking platform I'll unveil next week, I've spent the past two weeks building a similar portfolio to what I currently have in Marketocracy.com - however until I can build the short side up to balance the long side my position side on the long side is smaller. So for now, I've been relying more on these darned Ultrashort products.

No position