If you are like me, you don't really have many people in your circles who understand the pain and agony you go through every day to scratch out a little money.
Anywho.. I'll make it simple. I was having a pretty decent week. Yesterday morning I gave up on one underlying that I had for a couple of days. Wasn't doing horrible, not horrible enough to trigger any stops, just didn't "do it" for me. So I bailed on it. I initially planned to just sit on the cash but I had a couple of other plays I had been following so I went with one that had already had a nice run up, but it looked like it might have a little juice left. I got in, then just hung out. Before I knew it it was down about $.10, not biggie, but I was watching it close. I was already doing really well with the other couple of plays I had, I had a pretty hard stop on this one. Before I knew it, it started to slowly creep up, $.10, .20 .30 before the last hour I was up about 17% in just that one underlying. I wanted to just unload it but I was down to one day trade left (another rule I hate, but i'll save that rant for another day) so I figured I'll just ride it out. I'll be great. Anyway, finished the day up almost 20%. Call me lucky. This is great. I just backed into this thing. So afterhours, I set an order for the morning for a trailing -5% stop. This was a $4 stock, that I bought for $4.21, and was now at $5.10. I figured I would still get out at $4.80 or so, at the worst. So morning opening.. stock opens down .05, typical, no big deal. Within 5 min, its at 4.95, I for some stupid reason, take off my stop.. WHY!!??? My thinking was that the day before I watched it fall near the open and bounce back.. so I didn't want to miss out on it going to $6. Greed is bad kids. Bulls and bears make money, PIGS GET SLAUGHTERED. Cut to the chase.. I watched frozen, in horror actually as it went to the low 4s. Again, I thought, "it was here yesterday, and bounced around at about this time, before catching on" so I thought it would happen again. Does it ever?? It didn't . And now I had the realization that I had just lost 150$ in about 20 minutes. Not a good feeling. I wont give the play by play of the rest of the horror, but it closed that day at 2.20. And to make it worse, I sold half my shares at some point, in the 3s at least (I think, its still a whirl wind) then later in the afternoon, bought back a bunch at $3.14, when I thought (don't we all when we are scrambling for reason??) it was surely making it's grand come back and I could recoup some of my loses. But it quickly sold off again. So I took a +100 gain and turned it into a -300 loss. Really smart .
Moral.. BE MECHANICAL! Obey your rules. And take profits dummy!!!
(sorry for the novel, I meant this to be short, but I am long winded)
Comment