Bookkeeping: Short Ross Stores (ROST), Steve Madden (SHOO)

With the constant gap up or downs to open each session it is nearly impossible to do anything overnight with the general indexes, so I'm going to make some attempts on the short side with individual equities. I actually got both these ideas from "RevShark" over at Realmoney.com - when I looked at the charts they are exactly what I typically short. But frankly there are about 500 other charts that look identical and if the market blasts through 1102 on the way to nirvana the individual name will mean nothing as you see on your screens today when almost every stock is green.

These are 2 retailers with almost identical set ups.

I am shorting about 2.2% exposure in Ross Stores (ROST) around $52.70; I will stop out just over yesterday's intraday high so $53.80 which will control any loss at 2%.




I am shorting about 2.8% exposure in Steve Madden (SHOO) around $33.40; I will stop out just over the 20 day moving average of $34.30 which will control any loss at 3%.



Again let me reiterate there are 100s of identical chart and these are textbook short set ups... stocks that have broken support and have rallied back to the level of the break. (frankly both have decent fundamentals as far as retailers go) But picking and choosing individual equities means very little nowadays as we continue "student body left" trading (everything must be bought, or everything must be sold) that has dominated markets since 2007. At this point it seems we are never going to go back to a 2 sided market where some stocks go up and some stocks go down based on individual merits. That's just not how HAL9000 works.

Short Steve Madden, Ross Stores in fund; no personal position