Below is a preview of the revision of 'This Week's Best' page. Its an upgrade to include the week's worst stocks at the bottom of the 100 Stocks Portfolio rankings list. This will enable users to run their own hedge funds. Compete with the finest!

A few simple rules should apply. Don't short the worst ranked stock alone. Use three or more stocks. Hold these short continuously as long the market trend is down. If they rise out of the bottom ranks, replace them with the next worst stocks lower down.

See the WEAKEST STOCKS / This Week's Worst section in the page below. Five are listed. All are bottom ranked and sell at share prices of $10 or more. Using the trend of the market reported by the Mostly USA Portfolio (what you see in real time each week in this Systems Tips Letter), you will want to be long or short. USA most recently turned down November 2nd. It's shown as the last row at the bottom of this page.

The bottom ranked stocks that week (not shown here) were Citigroup, Novellus, Digital River, F5 Networks, and J2 Global Comm, the first three from the Classic portfolio, the last two from the Internet Set. Their rankings were 93, 92, 97, 96, and 98 respectively.

Over the six weeks to December 14th, C and HD were down -18% and -12% respectively. All five averaged -7.9%. The Dow was down -1.8%, the S&P500 -2.8%. The top five ranked stocks, Apple Inc., Baidu.com, Netease, Open Text, and Sohu were all down except Apple which was up. As a group they averaged -6.2%

There is a second lesson here. The market trend leads most stocks, including both the strongest and the weakest. If you want to be an aggressive hedger, forget about being both long and short simultaneously--the original and still valid meaning of 'hedging'. You would have made a small profit of +1.7% instead of the much more generous +7.9% in the few weeks covered.

Timing trumps selection. For convenience, I have included the weekly USA trend at the bottom of the page.

This new page goes into effect this week in the Mostly USA ETFs subscription letter. It replaces the Stocks Entering High Percentiles section. If there is demand to see the bottom ten rankings instead of five, that may be accommodated.

-7.9% short sale in six weeks.
Make that +67% profit, annual rate, selling short.

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