Like you, I'm in no rush here. At the same time, I can't predict if and when any of these are going to reverse.
So, what to do? I'm looking for potential setups, where I can minimize risk to the downside or at least have a point where I have to take the trade off the table due to a "false" setup. It may blow up in our faces, so to speak but we've enough winners to more than offset the one off disaster. Most of the blow ups have been in really low priced stocks, below $3/share, so going forward, those are no longer in our watch lists (unless we already own "free" shares in them, like ACLS, CYTK, EOX, INVE, WFR, CSIQ, QUIK and OCLR). Stocks must be above $3 to be candidates.
I'm mostly looking for "seeds" to plant in my folks IRA "garden". Buy a few thousand shares, hoping to trade out the main principle after a nice gain, leaving a "seed" behind. I was watching XRTX but was a bit of a deer in the headlights. Literally, coulda, shoulda....
I'm also trimming down the population of stocks to choose from. Recently I was able to grab a nice bounce in SPLK and a out of favor Chinese stock, LIWA. Leaving my folks with a few "free" shares in each stock. The key is taking small losses if the timing of the buys doesn't play out but also to buy in small enough lots that you're not really on anyone's radar. The people who trade these stocks, weren't changing their patterns because of my limited transactions that were done when volume was spiking (in a relative manner).
Similarly, I picked off RENN today or I should say yesterday and sold today. Bought 4K right before the close then dumped 3800 today, leaving 200 free. Whether or not RENN is worthy of a long term investment is up to debate but now that we have "free" shares, we will give it a lot of rope before we take a smaller gain on a big dump, should it continue down.
I've done this with a number of stocks in their portfolio over the past few months, FB, CVV, IXYS, FIO, VVUS, RDN, INVE, FSLR, JDSU, RVBD, ARUN, CIEN, UNP, BIDU, MA, WYNN, EZCH, GLW, ETFC. Had a few busts but I would guess that we've had about 5 to 1 winners vs. losers. Picking off small pieces here and there. Refining the processes. I am moving away from trying the smaller caps and riskier stocks but if the setup looks good, I'll consider them as well. We've had a few blow ups but that is to be expected. Lastly, we don't really care if we end up with odd lots. MA, WYNN, BIDU and UNP were gains of less than 100 shares, fwiw.
I had put CYMI on the list of current candidates a few days before their announcement but hadn't seen the "right" setup...oh well. At least my instinct was strong!
Once we own it and the "free" stock falls more than 30%, we track it and try to determine if we want to take some off the table. Likewise, if we have a blow up, we look at those where we have made good money and decide if we are going to rebuild the loss funds from the largest % winners...CLSN was one of those.
EDIT - yesterday, of course, meant Friday with RENN..... |
