Shorting Requires Solid Facts, Not Anger

Then, on a couple of days in the spring and summer of 2000, Nortel(NT) and Lucent(LU) said their customers were slowing down purchases.

Then you could short them. And we did, every time Landis was on. And we didn't cover them all when Landis was done because we knew he would be back on, and it kept us fresh to keep the names on the sheets so we could short them again when the mustachioed wonder was back on the set.

You had to have more than hatred to bring down a stock. You needed facts.

If you know that auctions are slowing down on eBay, you should have your whole fund short it. If you heard that Barnes & Noble.com(BNBN) was going to pay you for buying books on line, you should short Amazon. If you knew that the government was going to ban Electronic Arts' games, you should short ERTS. If you knew that Yahoo!(YHOO) had decided to ban advertising, you should short Yahoo!.

But if you know nothing more than what I know, which is that these stocks are as expensive as all get-out, then even during this seasonally weak period they will be unrewarding shorts.

Sorry to let you down. Sorry not to give what many of you want.

But that has never been my style.

Random musings: Why is the press so suspicious of the situation in Iraq? It's because it wasn't suspicious enough about Vietnam. If you think that's not the case, go read David Maraniss' They Walked into Sunlight. Real good read. ... My television partner Larry Kudlow wants to know why the Democrats were so gloomy about the economy. I think it is because they want to be elected and don't want to see George W. Bush elected, but then again, I always had a keen eye for the obvious.

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