Friday 11 January 2008

Back into the United States Steel short

Back on Monday, when I was looking for a good stock to short into a recession, I sold some United States Steel (X), and within 30 minutes or so I was able to buy it back 5.2% lower, a bit of a crazy trade! Now, the stock is back up thanks to an upgrade yesterday by some analyst. Unfortunately, my Yahoo Finance alert which I'd set to trigger if the stock went above $108.50 only JUST NOW sent me the message, despite the fact the stock went above 110 yesterday. Very annoyed at this, so I'm going to go into a small short only. Just sold ~$11,000 at $107.06.



If it goes up, I'll just sell more, if it goes down, I'll sell more and just stick a stop-loss at the average price. Figure I can't really lose either way.

My rational still stands from Monday for this trade...in a recession, steel stocks will get CRUSHED.


Yours,
2and20

2 comments:

Dimitris said...

I think X (steel in general) could be a great short coming into 2008 recession.

Duferco predicts slowdown in steel industry

2and20 said...

thanks for the link.

i reckon shorting steel and chemical companies is a massive no brainer, 2 sectors that ALWAYS get smoked in a recession.

ps. partly cos of your blog, i was short countrywide for a lot of last year...so cheers!