Yes, you're right in that sense. but remember that banks dun force sell when a stock goes north and traders only short in a big way during bad news or when they foresee a downtrend...its like adding oil to a burning fire but the fact is that generally, people likes a bull more than a bear.

Lets take a stock to be a living thing, do you prefer to kill him or save him to make money?  Well the choice is yours! I would prefer to focus in a single direction.

I do not mean to offense anyone here but just sharing my tots...

To me...shorting or the "conventional" way of buying low selling high are the same...pple will still get burn...shorting or selling high are still the same...(you are hoping the counter is at its highest price) if the counter goes your way...the other party that is buying still gets hurt...

When someone sell...there will be another person buying it...It is always the greater fool's theory at work in the market... one side gets the $$ while the other end of the transaction gets hurt.. it is the nature of how things work in the stock markets.

So shorting or not... the end result is still the same...

Just my own tots...

My opinion is that,ipunter is a trader.He has the foresight to sell high and buy low.

Hercules,on the other hand,is an investor.Thus he can forget about the stocks he is holding.

Hence,the difference betw the 2.

The key is to forget about the stocks you are holding. If you can do that and if your stocks are good, then you can buy stock at time of the year. Sometimes there's no need to check price everyday. Once a month might be good.

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iPunter      ( Date: 08-Jul-2008 22:14) Posted: The trick is to get out while the loss is still small... Holding on and hoping during a long bear market is painful...