Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : DAYTRADING Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steven Ivanyi who wrote (5892)	12/8/1999 1:30:00 AM
From: cloudless	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

>>The moral of the story is don't walk away from your computer when you have a trade on: you can't cut loses or do anything.<< Steven ~ you left the trades open while you went???? True story - I went to the bathroom (10 feet from my office) one day and came back 60 seconds later to find out I was under water.... Kindergarten and pet hamsters... the daytraders nightmare!!! May tomorrow be better for you!! Good Luck, Cloudless

To: Steven Ivanyi who wrote (5892)	12/8/1999 9:44:00 PM
From: Dominick	Respond to of 18137

Steven: Welcome to the club :) I went to the bathroom and flushed $700 down the toilet. Ain't life wonderful! Dominick

To: Steven Ivanyi who wrote (5892)	12/10/1999 4:37:00 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18137

Hi Steven Ivanyi; Re the bad trading experience. I had an experience today that left a rather bad taste in my mouth, though I didn't really lose money. I was long CSPI from a week ago at 5 1/8th. It's one of the few stocks that I regularly leave in my account overnight, as it trades with tiny volume and a huge spread, and was at a fairly safe stock price (in terms of the things that interest value investors). So I regularly make market in it, but with a time frame measured in days rather than the usual seconds. A few days ago it announced a Linux solution for business to use to create web sites for their customers. Since this was sexy, the stock doubled, and I got out of half my shares at 9 7/8, versus a stock high price of 10 1/4. But I left the others in my account, because I still figured that the news was better than the stock movement. Today, it gapped up, and started to come back down, probably due to shorters. (There have been a lot of people making good money by shorting small cap stocks that make big percentage up moves recently, though they have been badly punished on stocks like ADSP.) But when the stock went back up through the opening price, (which is a classic price for opening gap shorters to cover at a small loss), it started rocking, and got as high as $17. Incidentally, the intraday stock chart is a great example of a gap up, followed by small decline and then rise to above the gap, followed by explosion (presumably due to short covering): quote.yahoo.com The $17 price put me in the position of having a huge paper profit, more than I can remember having on my account in a long time. I hate to have to type this, but like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car, I froze. I quit my usual scalping, and just watched the one stock. Watched the stock drop back from $17 down to about half that. Kept watching it. Left it in my account overnight. Worse yet, I bought back the shares I sold at 9 7/8 at 11 1/8, and they are now underwater. The 5 1/8 shares are way in the money, but I still feel like a moron. So even though I lost fairly small money for the day, and my CSPI trade is probably okay, I still feel really guilty for not taking those profits off the table. Probably a contributing factor in this was my ADSP overnight hold recently. I had bought at around $11 when the stock traded more than its float on the day before Thanksgiving. Then I sold (by phone, since my office was closed) the next day for a double. But the stock closed the day at $37, and peaked at $57. So I felt that if I had just been a little more patient, I would have done better. I definitely sold into a fast rising market then, but way too early. Any thoughts from the traders on how to psychologically avoid that tendency to not take profits? My usual problem is taking profits too early, but I guess I just got greedy. One of the other traders (jokingly) suggested that I was intending on retiring on just that trade. The other problem is that this made one of my long term (i.e. 2 to 14 day) holds into something that kept me from scalping with my usual efficiency. I hardly traded today. -- Carl P.S. I think it is great that you take time out to take care of your kids. I think that kids are the greatest joy that life can provide, and are a lot more important than trading. But trading is a job, so the thing to do is to get out of positions when emergencies arise.