How to be long when everyone else is short

The main thing preoccupying Flash Rabbit is what to buy that offers some value. So he now has a shortlist of four or five stocks that he's roadtesting with small long positions. They are:

Scottish and Southern Energy - very profitable, large customer base, making strategic acquistions, with large expertise and capacity in renewables and therefore less vulnerable to oil - also a possible acquisition target for one of the larger global players

Game Group - released interim trading statement this week, and for no apparent reason the price dropped - sales are good, profits likely to be up, and we all know that even in a proto-recession demand for entertainment and computer games is insatiable, and teenagers like to spend money...

ASOS - innovative online fashion retailing - price/value conscious - likely to do well with the 21st century consumer - trading well even in this marketplace

Workspace Group - affordable low cost workspace for start-ups and SMEs in London, sitting on a ton of great, affordable real estate that will be even more valuable as 2012 approaches, notwithstanding everything else that's happening in the property market

D1 Oils - lots of people have had their fingers badly burnt with this stock, but anything that's an alternative to oil - particularly the jatropha proposition - looks interesting. And at this price even if it goes down further the rabbit won't lose much money. Thus far he is marginally in profit.

Of course all of these - particularly the retailers - might be wildly optimistic calls but Flash Rabbit thinks that while the rest of the herd is short it might be a good moment to try out a few long positions. He's fully prepared to be proved expensively wrong and for now has kept his short FTSE and Dow positions in place as some sort of hedge.

Other calls are trying to find companies that deal with environmental crisis - reclamation, dams, pollution clean up, that sort of thing, and anything to do with bicycles, high speed rail and public transport infrastructure - for this reason Flash Rabbit is taking a close look at WS Atkins and is hanging on by his fingernails to his long positions in Stanelco (bioplastics) and Axeon (innovative battery technology, but struggling this week after a very promising month).

Plus long the dollar against the pound (and, probably from next week, the euro), and long euribor (which proved yesterday to be exactly the right call). There will be more shocks to come but perhaps (and according to this wise rabbit) we should be now expecting something of a bounce, especially if inflationary pressure has peaked? Well, yes, but we need to keep close account of what happens to oil. Flash Rabbit can't see any reason why the oil price might drop soon - unless, that is, demand drops, which is possible given that energy efficiency has finally gone mainstream and the price is nightmarishly high already...

Still way short on the aforementioned banks, but may take some profits depending on what happens at the start of next week.