A Comparison of Long vs Short Trades... Time Line

I always considered a short sell trade to be the faster moving trade due to prices dropping faster than they typically rise. While that may be true I did some comparisons between long and short trades for my sample of stocks and trades since June 2009.

For 21 stocks that I compared over the course of 434 trades completed there were 268 long trades and 166 short trades.

So I traded about 62% of the trades long.

Then I compared how much time I spent in the trades. I expected that I had spent near 70% of my trade time in the long trades, figuring that they are slower moving and there were more of them than shorts. I was surprised by the results.

I spent only 54% of my time in long trades.

I might suspect that the discrepancy may be due to varied targets, except that a short and long profit target are the same for trades in the same stock when the price is relatively the same.

Well, apparently this throws my assumptions about long vs short trade time frames out the window or perhaps the particular patterns and stats that I look for in my picks are more prone to slower moving down moves.

Jeff.