The short list- an introduction

In a past life, I worked as a consultant for a firm that performed accounting and governance analyses on companies to ferret out potential short candidates, or at least companies that should be carefully researched in order avoid landmines. That was before the recession. Too bad too. It was a good gig and expanded my knowledge considerably. Cannot complain about the extra income also. It is also disappointing because I thought there was some real value there. The process I developed and stocks I wrote up underperformed the market by 1350 basis points (13.5%) relative to the S&P 500 over the two years I worked with this company.
 

No bother though, one cannot dwell on the past. Besides, there is nothing preventing me from doing what I did there for you here. And that is exactly what I plan on doing. I have begun recreating the process, and I hope to write-up one or two companies a month highlighting potential short-list candidates. 
Earlier this year, I used Marketocracy.com to create a watch list of potential candidates for the short lsit. The public profile of this watch list can be found here. I have also included some descriptive statistics for the list below. Watch for the short list in future posts.

	RETURNS Last Week -0.64% Last Month -7.16% Last 3 Months -7.62% Last 6 Months 4.71% Last 12 Months N/A Last 2 Years N/A Last 3 Years N/A Last 5 Years N/A Since Inception -7.92% (Annualized) -11.30% S&P500 RETURNS Last Week -0.27% Last Month 3.18% Last 3 Months 7.39% Last 6 Months 3.94% Last 12 Months N/A Last 2 Years N/A Last 3 Years N/A Last 5 Years N/A Since Inception 12.90% (Annualized) 19.30% RETURNS VS S&P500 Last Week -0.37% Last Month -10.34% Last 3 Months -15.01% Last 6 Months 0.77% Last 12 Months N/A Last 2 Years N/A Last 3 Years N/A Last 5 Years N/A Since Inception -20.81% (Annualized) -30.60%

fund rankings
		ALL RANKINGS FOR The Short Fund Date 1 Month 3 Months 6 Months 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year Mar 31, 2012 73.0% 22.5% Jun 30, 2012 59.6% #51 #98
		N/C = "Not Compliant", and means The Short Fund wasn't compliant for that period. A blue star means The Short Fund was in the top 100 funds for that period. A green star means The Short Fund was in the top 25%. The numbers above are the percentage of compliant funds that The Short Fund beat in the given time period, unless it was in the top 100 for that period, in which case the number displays your rank.

alpha/beta vs. S&P500
		For an explanation of alpha and beta, see the entry for "beta" in our glossary. Alpha 30.82% Beta -1.92 R-Squared 0.87

turnover
		Last Month 2.75% Last 3 Months 5.37% Last 6 Months 19.77% Last 12 Months N/A