new trader

[shmoey222]

in this unpredicable and volatile market, what do you feel about going long on inverse etf's in sectors that have been badly hurt and long in the best performing stock in that sector? My trade idea was long SKF and long JPM.

[disneysteve]

Welcome to the site. As I pointed out to another poster recently, there are a number of investing forums where people discuss and debate individual stocks, charts, systems, etc. This is not one of those sites. While there are some here who invest in individual stocks, myself included to a small extent, I think you'll find that most of us here use mutual funds and ETFs in our portfolios. We are generally a somewhat conservative crew around here, talking more about trimming our budgets, funding our 401ks and Roths, dollar-cost-averaging into our mutual funds and such.

You may get some responses to your question, but if you don't, that's probably why.

[Broken Arrow]

Ehhhh, OK, I'll bite.

UltraShorts are really popular lately because the market has been doing badly recently.

However, UltraShorts are also very risky. It's essentially a basket of shorts, and shorts are inherently risky to begin with. An informed investor would do well to consider the impressive risks that come with the impressive gains.

Anyway, let me reiterate what Steve just said. This is a really great crowd, full of intelligent people. However, they're not generally into exotic investment vehicles. For that, you'd have to look elsewhere.

However, as you do so, please keep this in mind: People have a tendency to brag publically when their speculations are panning out handsomely. However, just because it is right now, that does not automatically make it a sound investment strategy into the future. Please be careful about getting caught up in such frenzies, especially when exercising options. They may be useful with an obvious bubble, but from what I've seen, many are simply getting lucky with a largely unsubstantiated bearish view.

Lastly, please remember that a real contrarian is bullish in bear markets, and bearish in bull markets.