Is it that bad?

'I am finding it tough to find stocks to short' I explained to a colleague earlier this week. Even looking at some of the worst performers of the past 5-10 trading days I am not filled with doom, gloom and despair to go short.

Take British Airways. Technical analysts such as myself will tell you that it is showing a bearish divergence relative to the MACD (I know it sounds like a foreign language) - however the problem is the very strong uptrend. Fine - short it in the very short-term subject to a new 3 day high being an exit, but hardly a case for a long term sell.

So despite a falling dollar, is it that bad?

I have mentioned mmO2 a few times before the bid for the company was out in the open because on the chart it had a great run up beforehand - the issue now with the price around 105p as I write is whether the upside to 120p-130p is worth it? My view is someone is going to make a play, so down to 90p again is unlikely. If you want to take some money off the table then clear part of the position.

One of my favourites, Morrisions will have some short-term selling after its run up, but otherwise not one in the medium term of several months I have any complaint about.

As for long and sustained trends - Xstrata is an easy one. The great thing is you know where, roughly, to put your stop-loss exits - below the uptrend. It should not for instance drop below 685-690p for instance to keep our interest on the upside. Since it is at 740p, the upside target should be 820p at least to balance the downside risk. Now that would take 2 months at least.

Liberty looks likely to ease down to 700p at least before resuming up again. As for Land Securities - when they rise like this one, you just make sure you only exit on a 3 or 4 day low and re-enter on a 3 or 4 day high.

From Russia with gains

As ADVFN launch their new Russian stock service, I thought I would lend a helping hand by givin you a whiz bang tour of stocks to keep an eye on:

Vimpel Communications is a $4billion company is up around 12% year to date. With a p/e of 14, a PEG of a mere 0.3 and a mobile phone company whose major shareholders include Fidelity and JP Morgan the other thing you need to know about them is: "The population covered by the group's combined licenses is more than 28 million people, which represents approximately 19% of the Russian population."

Take a look also at MobileTelesystems and Rostelecom too.

You can email me about my free 50 page document on how to trade and invest better by me exclusively for ADVFN readers and: alpesh.patel@tradermind.com