Replies to post #55608 on ajtj99's Market Pulse

[JMKel]

It would be very helpful to have at least end of the day "short volumes" for the stocks and indices.

Publishing this data once a month results in the data being more or less useless and certainly not realtime.

Short volumes are critically important and there really is not valid reason they should not be posted realtime.

[market_watcher]

NYSE is registering over the last years time frame as much as 55% Shorts to all sales, spikes in this data occur routinely.

If the number really is this high, wouldn't that imply that the players in this game are the big institutions, a.k.a. the 'smart money'? If that's so, how can you be sure that they don't have a strategy for covering all these shorts in a way that will hurt those trying to play against them? Isn't it a commonplace strategy for 'little guys' to look at the COT data and try to trade with the commercials? If they've been shorting all the way up, doesn't it make sense to short along with them? These questions are, admittedly, asked without a deep knowledge of what data you're looking at, what kind of time frames you're looking to trade in, etc.

[ajtj99]

dvd, I understand the basic premise of your views - supply and demand. It makes sense, and is probably more fundamentally sound than T/A itself.

If you take a more macro view, the demand is increasing through retirement account proliferation, market participation, wealth accumulation by boomers who think they're going to live forever, etc. Add in the lower supply and it makes sense.

As for the short interest levels, until we get a more timely reporting of that number, it's really hard to employ it to indices for short term trades, although it's often times real helpful on individual stocks when there are not problematic fundamental underpinnings. When a stock needs 8-days for the shorts to cover, for example, explosive moves can result. You know that already, of course.

Do you think a lot of the higher short sales are a result of the market being about 60% programmed trades? It would seem a logical conclusion, as programs just look for ways to make money as opposed to LTBH.