This is very ironic, the US Global Investors.. or GROW as it’s known on the NASDAQ, was one of the first stocks I ever traded and made a bunch of money on.. in fact, I remember I could have made a LOT more, but got out at $35.50 or so when it ran up to a high of $72 approx.. without looking let me see how accurate I am:
Well.. it did a 2:1 stock split in April of 2007, with it’s high being 34.95.. so that’s pretty darn close to $70.. anyhow.. you get my point.. Anyhow at 4:45pm Tim sent me an alert to short GROW (of course he got in at 5.95 but by the time I looked at the silly stock, it was at 5.55) So I took a look at ThinkOrSwim’s status on the stock and it is ‘hard to borrow’.. so I (for the first time) consulted the chat and here was the conversation:
19:53 lencurrie: Looking to short just 35 shares… fee involved?
19:53 TOS: ok we have that would you like me to place a order?
19:53 lencurrie: please yes
19:53 lencurrie: is there a different fee involved?
19:53 TOS: what price
19:53 TOS: 12% hard to borrow fee
19:54 TOS: it will cost you around a dime a day to short 35 shares
19:54 lencurrie: 8.60 is fine
19:54 lencurrie: oh ok thank you
19:54 TOS: that order is working
19:55 lencurrie: thanks very much
19:55 TOS: your welcome
19:55 TOS: bye
Ok first thing you’ll say is.. 85 shares?? are you kidding me?? that’s so little it hardly makes any sense to do!! And to your point.. I know. It is, in fact it’s so little I barely expect to make enough to cover the commissions.. however.. it’s still $300 that I have in action.. and I’m thinking that this may go down to $8 if I’m lucky.. profitting me $21, that’s a 7% profit which I will take. And this was my FIRST TimAlert ever shorted.. so we’ll see if it ends profitably.. and if so, I will continue with larger amounts.. I mean.. you have to start somewhere right? Plus this was the first time I ever shorted a ‘hard to short’ stock.. so it’s nice to have that under you belt as well to be comfortable with it.
What’s interesting is the play after the TimAlert goes out .. check out the following graph:
You can see where Tim likely bought his short at 4:36pm or at 4:44 as he shorted 2000 shares at $5.95.. You can then see the amount of volume which crushed this stock leading into the close with the spikes as they are. Funny about that eh? To my estimation he could have made $800 just by sending out his alert and covering at $8.50 as the TimFollowers shorted GROW as well, however I don’t think he’s doing that.
I have another larger trade which I performed today as well which I will post right after this one.
We’ll see when the ‘COVER!’ Alert comes out on this TimAlert.. be interesting to find out when he’s going to cover up and if I’ve missed the big drop.. (personally I don’t think so).