In this feature we cover Evil Knievil’s – perhaps the UK’s most prominent bear raider – piece on what to look for when shorting stocks, and the pitfalls that you should look to avoid when trading short.

There are many advantages to spreadbetting, but one of the best ones must remain bagging a quick profit with hardly any costs involved. When a share puts out some kind of warning, these days the knee-jerk reaction is to overdo it on the downside.

In a previous article titled Trade Exits: What’s Your Way Out? I suggested that many retail investors and spread bettors think only about their entries — i.e. which instruments to bet on, and when — and not their exits. The problem is actually wider than that…

Retail investors and spread bettors should have an exit strategy for each of their positions, but many don’t have one. They think only about their entries, and not their exits.

Have you heard the phrase: A long-term investment is a short-term trade gone wrong!? It refers to many people’s natural tendency to hold on to an initially poorly performing trade in the hope that it eventually recovers; thus promoting it inadvisedly from a speculative “trade” to a serious investment.

Did you see the news on 5 January that ‘Kodak shares tumble 28% amid fears about its future’, followed just five days later on 10 January by ‘Kodak stock rises 46% on new business plan’? Did you take advantage of those events? I did, and it looked like this…

You already know that I ditched my Google Docs spreadsheet implementation of my Stop-Out List in favour of one based on the Google Finance Portfolio Feature. The more I use the new implementation, the more I like it.

My idea of a Stop-Out List that shows me my last selling price of each stock (so that I never buy back more expensively) has served me well.

I hope my sensationalist headline got your attention, and I bet you’re wondering by what kind of strange alchemy a long trader can make money from falling prices. But first, why would he want to?