Shutterfly - Trying to Fly with Broken Wings

When we wrote the last article on Shutterfly (NASDAQ: SFLY), its stock just got whacked by news that Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) unrolled its Cards app for iPhone 4S, which allows users to take pictures and then send out physical picture cards to their families and friends. The stock recovered mightily at the end of that date, showing a great hammer pattern, and then proceeded to rise from $40/share to almost $50/share in the next three weeks. It again illustrated how difficult it is to short stocks, although we did add a little more shorting during that time.

When we first started shorting Shutterfly, we started around the mid-fifties. At that time, the street still had high hopes on SFLY, but a great numbers of insiders were already unloading their shares. Starting with a slightly disappointing earnings report in July, investors were still hoping that the company would do well going into Christmas season. That's also when the Apple news hit in early October but then the stock rose again. However, once the Q3 earnings were announced, investors noticed that they had placed too much hope in the company just because it has the keywords 'technology' and 'retail' in its business. The stock was all downhill from there.

The stock took another big hit on November 30th when it mentioned that its margin was squeezed by other online photo retailers' agressive price cut such as HP's (NYSE: HPQ) Snapfish. Subsequently, the stock is now trading at $27.81/share.

With 2011 coming to a close, we believe that fund managers will put selling pressure on SFLY, as they sell losers and buy winners for year end window dressing. However, the big shorting opportunity for SFLY has passed, and although we may short more SFLY for its technical weakness, we will also keep a tighter stop in case the stock is poised for a rebound.