Mish, I really respect you or anyone that admits when they were less than perfect. We all make less than good decisions in the heat of the moment and it is refreshing when people admit it. Your honesty is much appreciated and what I hope this thread will be all about so we can learn from each other. If more people would share successes and mistakes, we would all learn from them and perhaps avoid having to make the same mistake with our money.
Still I think you are being too hard on yourself. You made a profit and like me, you probably need to let the winners run a bit more. At least I do! I am good at cutting off losers, but not great at the former. I also hate setting stop-loss limits since that is just an invitation for MM's to go down and get the stock at your limit and then run it right back up. I hate that even more and have seen it too many times.
You are also right about buying options in markets that are going nowhere. It only benefits the writers of the contracts, while it sucks time value out of those who own them.
BTW - Want a sad story? I was ready to pull the trigger, on some SYMC calls right before earnings and I chickened out, losing potentially almost 800% of option gains overnight. Arrggh! LOL!
Of course the main reason I like to buy options near earnings is that there is less manipulation and less of a time value suckout problem. I may guess wrong, but you always know that the earnings news will cause the stock to move. If you buy an option too early the common could just tread water, while you option value goes down. I hate that.
Interestingly enough, I was wondering whether to buy options in QCOM yesterday before the close. I couldn't decide whether to buy puts or calls, so I did nothing.
It turned out either would have worked great and both even better. Even if you bought calls, you would have been fine since the stock rallied up nicely after falling in the first hour or so. The really nimble player bought puts before the close yesterday, sold first thing this morning, then bought calls immediately when the stock was near the LOD. But that would have been some fancy footwork.
Night everyone. Have a great weekend. You'll be up before I will. LOL! |
