I am VERY gingerly stepping back into the short side in the basket of 5 commercial real estate stocks we hold. We just saw a short squeeze of epic nature and being a participant I am still looking for the teeth that were kicked out of my mouth. Again... gingerly. Of the 5 names SL Green (SLG) indeed has been the weakest (NYC office market party) - other than last Friday when "The Club" pushed up REITs it's been dead man walking.
Right now I don't have a very good feel for this market, because the ethos of the consumer is back - which I highly disagree with - are lending strength to areas of the market I dislike the most over the intermediate term. Then last Friday the market held key level S&P 825 and even the 100 day moving average (832) only to reverse down. Making things ever more tricky is almost every morning we now gap up or down 1-2% so your entire portfolio is marked in one direction or another based on mood swings. So I envision as I build shorts back up, we will gap up 2% Wednesday on some nonsense "better than expected" result and the technical condition will turn back to "bullish". And we'll be in the wrong spot yet again. So to hedge some of these short positions I am trying to slowly build up some long exposure back into individual names that have corrected a bit; which we took profits in last week. I keep waiting for some sideways action within a wide range lasting a few weeks....
Via Short Stock Ideas from Seeking Alpha:
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