Who knew I was short the strongest stock in the market?  The stock gapped up.  Then buyers stopped paying the offer.  The stock broke its intraday uptrend.  And I shorted two lots with a Trade2Hold.  Well that didn’t work out.

HAS, Hasbro, reported before the Open and beat on revs and the bottom line.  Apparently someone is buying toys again.  On the one year chart there was no resistance.  HAS started an intraday downtrend.  34.30 held the offer on the tape.  I added more to my short position from 44c.

I entered stops of 31c, 36c and 60c got up and went to take care of a personal matter.  When I returned I was completely flat in HAS.  Well that is not good.

The teaching principle for this trade?  For Trades2Hold we must set stops if the stock trades against us.  When trading multiple lots we need multiple stops.  I close out almost all of my positions manually but with Trades2Hold I will use stops.  For a Trade2Hold you cover only when there is a Reason to Cover.  And one such reason is if the stock trades against you, hitting a price that you set as your stop.

There was too much bid buying on the way down.  Stocks like HAS that gap up almost never buy so much stock on the way down.  They drop out and the tape foreshadows the weakness generally.  My short position ambition was bigger than my trading senses.

Overall this was a good trade.  I opened an excellent risk/reward short.  But HAS wasn’t weak enough on the tape for me to be short two lots.

Later I learned that I had started this short in the strongest stock in the market.  Brilliant Bella!  Above 34.60 I did start a long position and a tweet exchange with @sellputs about its chances of trading well through 35.  @sellputs wasn’t optimistic.   I held not seeing any weakness on the tape yet cautious of price.  HAS closed strong, but well below 35 and is on my radar for tomorrow-especially above 35.15.

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Long HAS