There is an improvement on the Woulda Shoulda Coulda page I wanted to tell you about. As many of you know, this page (which, as far as I know, has no equal on the web) lets you play “Time Machine” and enter trades from the past to see how they would have performed.
Ironically for this website, it only let you enter long positions. Now you can enter short positions. All you have to do is enter a negative number when you enter the Amount. Here are three imaginary short sales:
As shown above, shorting SNAP has yielded a 72% profit to date. Shorting AMZN, even with recent turmoil, has generated a tiny loss, while shorting TSLA has created a 27.6% gain. The “Max Drawdown” and “Max Loss” are defined on the page for you.
Of course, it doesn’t take long to see how horrible losses can get in the world of short selling. Of course, such losses could never exist (your broker would close you out), but it’s humbling just to see:
