A quick lesson on shorting:
First thing I want to clarify is shorting penny stocks is possible. Second thing I want to clarify is you cant afford to short anything under a penny neither can I. See shorting a stock is the act of borrowing shares from a broker or prop house with the promise that you will buy those same shares back in the open market the same day. If you hold them over night they often charge fees that are a couple cents a share. Example being if you shorted 1 million shares of XYZ stock and held it overnight it would cost you in most cases $20,000 just to carry that stock over in fees. Do you really think there are people out there carrying over that much money to short a stock for multiple days? You could never profit doing that on a sub penny. So people that are shorting pennies are usually short stocks closer to a dollar where they can justify 2 cents a share on stock than can go down 10-12 cents in a single trading session. Next issue with shorting a sub penny is backing cost with some brokers requiring you to back any stock you borrow at a certain minimum liek $2.50 a share you would need an account in excess of $2.5 million just to short that 1 million shares :) I dont know all the companies out there but a quick search from me revealed that the average minimum was over a dollar on a penny stock per share in reserve capital for each share bought. Its the brokers protection for loaning you the shares that if the short fails you wont skip town and leave them with the check. People with the kind of money to short sub pennies dont waste it or risk it on such things it takes too much effort and capital to make a minimal return on investment.
Even the Guru Timothy Sykes who loves to talk about shorting has this to say on his website about shorting
" And ya know what, the reason I’m a teacher and not a bigtime hedge fund manager is that whether or not I expose these pumps, there has NEVER been that many shares to short…welcome to my strategy that is both a gift up to six figures and a curse for those who want to make more than seven figures…the strategy of short selling penny stocks is not scalable into the tens or hundreds of millions of annual profits, the best anyone can do is a few million and most of my best students only earn five and six figures/year."
So even he admits that 1. you have to find a broker to loan you the shares and most of the time they dont have that many to loan and 2. It takes a lot of backing money to short stocks and most of the people saying they are shorting stocks just dont have it. Sorry but you dont have it. You might do ok but you dont have that kind of clout and if you did I promise you wouldnt be dumb enough to expose it for a return like that on an intra-day trade.
So the question becomes how can you short a stock without actually selling any shares or very few shares? Well first you need to buy some in the open market :) then you need to determine where you want to take the price so you can load the shares needed to cover your buy. Lastly you need some scare tactics! Whats that well its all the rage right now! Since few people understand shorting let alone have an account worthy of a broker who would loan them shares to sell. They are victims to one of the most cruel hoaxes of all. The nuclear bomb threat!
When a stock runs it almost always has a pull back lets take XYZ stock again for example lets say it was trading at .0015 on Monday and it takes off and runs to .005 by Tuesday afternoon! Weeee high fives all around and lots of parties and everybody is happy :) but we all know many times companies dilute shares into a run. Penny stock companies are usually very poor start up firms who need cash and windfall like a stock price increase is a great time to generate working capital which increases the number of shares for sale and increases the float. This causes the price to naturally correct itself to an area more suitable for the new float and share structure. But wait how can you make money well all you need is to keep the story alive! XYZ is up at .005 and the company is selling shares causing the price to start coming down into the .003 range you go ahead and take some shares lets say 5 million and you wait allowing XYZ to slow down the selling. Now you start posting your big blocks up on the ASK causing retail who bought in much higher to start selling since the "dilution" will never stop and you keep using those funds to keep constant pressure on the stock. You hire a couple of cheap bashers to talk about how bad the company is and how much they are diluting this POS stock and you make sure they bring up any errors that might have happened with them over the years while constantly applying pressure to drive the price down. You keep scaring people until the price is lets say close to where it started. .0019 range and you begin buying pieces while continuing to apply your own downward pressure with even more shares that you are buying. You keep the pressure on the stock buying in blocks as the price gets lower and lower finally reaching a "technical indicator" or a bottom. By now you have accumulated several times over the number of shares you used to push the price down and are ready for a run. But you need hope so once again you step to the plate and provide that much needed bid support while getting even more people to start talking about how great the stock is. You start buying to get the market excited and bring up PPS. You have the bashers step off the board for a bit while the pumpers tout its awesomeness and before you know it its starting to run again :) when the stock finally clears you buy down number remember it was .003 you start showing big back bids and small ASKS you get off the first 5 million you bought and then you sell shares all the way back down while the stock is pumped again and again. As soon as you start running low on shares you bring in the bears and pull the pumpers and start talking about the non stop dilution and toxic whatevers. You begin the process all over again until the retail market no longer wants to play your stock. You whack out your final position and walk away. Stock is trashed but your pockets are full :)
Does this story sound like something you played recently? Its becoming a very popular way to manipulate stocks. Since its pretty common knowledge that stocks can be shorted but few understand it you can basically make people believe its geting shorted it until you completely devalue the stock. You buy up the scraps and you pump up its reversal.
I use this knowledge to find stocks and I ride the cycle to profits. Here is where it gets fun though if more people would start doing it we would break those cycles and see longer more profitable gains long term in some of these stocks especially with companies that are worth taking a shot on. Most OTC stocks fail but its not always their fault. Sometimes its because fraudulent promoters take away their chance to fund the stock organically by selling shares of the company in a healthy open market. When you squeeze these J.O's out of positions and force them to find other plays you protect your investments. When you freak out at the things they say and whack your shares out on the bid you fund their machine. Time to read more and understand more and stop acting like sheep. These guys are shorting even if they could they wouldnt want to but you dont know that or at least you didnt. Feel free to check my facts or even shoot Tim Sykes an email Im sure he will tell you the cost to short a sub-penny out weighs the reward assuming you can even get shares. Dont get slaughtered out there. Be the BULL and charge ahead........
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