Thank you for writing. Shorting a stock carries additional risk, relative to buying a stock to own, and then selling that same security. In theory, the most you can lose with that situation would be the amount you invested in that security. Say for example the company you buy declares bankruptcy and goes to zero the day after you purchase it. If the news comes out during trading hours, the stock is probably going to briefly halt trading, and then continue to fall all the way down to zero. Now if this news were to come out when the market is closed, you may be able to salvage some of your losses or you may lose everything you initially invested in that stock. Regardless, the worst case scenario is that the most you can lose is what you initially invested.
Shorting a stock is a completely different strategy. You would generally short a stock when you felt a particular security was going to decline in value. The idea is that you sell stock you don't own, which leaves your account negative that position. If the price of the stock goes down, and you buy to cover that same stock at the lower price, this brings your account back to zero. The difference between the sale and purchase price, minus commissions, would be your gain.
There are a couple things to keep in mind with shorting stock. It does carry more risk then purchasing a stock. When you sell a stock you don't own, you are borrowing it from another person. To make this example easy, imagine there is only one other person in the entire world with 100 shares of a particular stock. You decide you want to sell that stock short and you execute a short sale for 100 shares. Say a month passes, and the company actually had good earning instead of the bad earnings you anticipated, so the price has actually appreciated. However you still want to hang on to that position because you feel the bad earnings might come out next quarter. The risk here is that, if the person you borrowed that stock from decides to sell the position they own, that means you are going to get a notice from your broker that this stock is no longer available to borrow and you will be forced to immediately buy to cover your short position, regardless of the price of the stock. This is one thing to consider. You are probably wondering how often this happens. The answer is that it depends on several factors. It depends how many shares are outstanding and publicly trading, the daily volume, etc. It's more likely to happen with low volume thinly traded stocks, however it can happen to anyone selling short, at anytime.
The next thing to consider is that in theory your maximum loss is infinite. Say you sell the stock short at $20.00. The next night the company makes an announcement that they discovered a wonder drug that makes you live forever. That stock is going to skyrocket! As the stock appreciates the margin requirement will go higher and higher. So at some point unless you have unlimited cash flow and like losing money, you will have to cover the position, regardless of high it is. To summarize, in theory your maximum loss when selling short is infinite.
The next thing to consider is that selling short requires a margin agreement on your account. Having a margin account also open's up additional buying opportunities in your account and is a different conversation. With that in mind, there are a few pages you should read before you consider selling short. I have a link to our margin disclosure and agreement, please read that. There is also a link below to the TradeKing page that talks about stock parameters and margin requirement's for selling short.
The mechanics of actually entering a sell short order is pretty simple. On the TradeKing Trading Stock Page, you would simply enter Sell Short as the action. Then continue to fill the rest of the order ticket out like a regular trade. Sell Short opening trades can only be entered as Day Orders, not GTC. Keep in mind is that whenever you short a stock, the broker has to first make sure it's available to short. There are cases when it might not be. So please check your order status page after you enter the trade to see if the order was accepted. You can click on the link on the right for each order you place to see what the status is.

Margin Disclosure and Agreement http://content.tradeking.com/wiki/display/tkservice/Margin+Account+Agreement+and+Disclosure

Margin Requirements

https://www.tradeking.com/PublicView/services/Services/Margin.tmpl

Happy Trading!

Hello RetireOnTime,

To get to our charts, you have a few different choices. You can use the Quote Box at the bottom of your screen by clicking on the black button "Get Quote." There are menu choices at the bottom on the right side of the screen. Click on Chart.

You can also go to:

Quotes + Research Tab > Quotes + News + Research

This screen will give you current quotes and a plethora of other interesting information including a mini chart, an options summary, news headlines, and competitor details. At the top of this page, you will be within one click of historical news, company summary, financials, earnings, company insiders, detailed charts, and our stock screener.

Clicking on the Charts tab will get you into the screen you need. You can also get to this feature under the Quotes + Research Tab > Charts.

Your default chart may be set to a time frame of 1 year. The time frame that is selected is highlighted in TradeKing blue. To change the time, choose 1 day, 5 day, 1 month, 3 month, 6 month, YTD, 1 Year, 3 Year, 5 year, 10 year.

Under this menu are more customization features. You can select a time interval to view, style of chart, upper and lower indicators, and standard or log format.

Within the 1 and 5 day charts you can get intra day data from 1 minute to 30 minutes. On this page, we do not currently offer intra day data older than 5 days. However, this feature is available with our Streaming Platform

At the bottom of the chart, you can edit your settings, save your settings, and save specific charts.

We currently do not offer historical quotes on our site. As you probably know you can get real-time quotes at no charge.

Hi all, I'm new to TradeKing (been an Etrade guy for years & years) and have some general questions about how things work at Tradeking.  Q1:I bought a Call, then later in the day sold the same Call.  Then I had the amount of monies listed in the "unsettled funds" area.   I then tried to Buy another Call (same trading day), but received an "Order Rejected" notice (or some similar wording).  At etrade, I could trade (buy/sell/buy/sell) all day long as long as I didn't run out of funds.  They allowed this as everything will clear and will "NET" out.  Is this a problem for Tradeking?  Q2: I don't see a way to "CANCEL" an order (eg. Stop Order) once it has been placed but BEFORE it is actually executed.  I must be missing something somewhere correct?

I am very impressed with your calculator and web-site so far.  Do you have any type of tool that shows premiums for writing calls or puts.  Thanks in advance for your time.

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