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To: the Chief who wrote (8218)	4/21/1999 5:18:00 PM
From: sweetchuks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 62348

oh damn chief! I WASNT offended! I was trying to say, even though it wasnt directed at me, i still appreciated the explanation and the time you took! Today was my first stop ever......it backfired and i've learned! I'll try to express myself clearer! thanks alot, good luck tommorrow! sweetchuks

To: the Chief who wrote (8218)	4/21/1999 5:49:00 PM
From: keith massey	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 62348

Great posts on stops Chief... I will add more later but wanted to remind people what happened to me the one time I didn't use stops in the past year. The stock was LWN...I didn't have a stop in because I was trying out Etrades new service which didn't offer stops at the time. I was holding when really bad news came out. To: Buckey John (2288 ) From: keith massey Thursday, Jan 14 1999 6:24PM ET Reply # of 8219 I felt like I got raped today on this stock. According to every single indicator I use for day trading this stock should have been good for at least a .25-.30 gain when I got in. Was sitting at a bottom of $8.9 for half an hour with some support and lots of resistance from $8.85 to $9.10. At this point the stock was down $1.65 from the high. Within 10 minutes all ASK had been taken out on big buys and huge support showed up from $9.05-8.80 (more than 50,000 shares). The rest of the big asks disappeared off the boards and there was only 12,000 shares between $9.20 and $10.05. I got filled at $9.10 on the upswing of this. MACD and Stoch gave buy signals and RSI was rising from 20 through the 30 line. I couldn't find any bad news any the earnings were not due out for another month. It hit $9.25 within 2 minutes and in one fail swoop after that all support from $9.10 to $8.80 was taken out and big ASKs than before showed up on the boards. At this point I knew the trade had turned on me so I placed a sell order. By the time it hit the boards (5 minutes) it had gone through my price so I lowered my sell. By the time my second sell had got to the boards (5 minutes) it had gone through that price. My next big mistake was not sell before close. Normally I would have had a stop-loss at $8.85 on this trade. I don't know who to blame more, myself for screwing up or Etrade for being a lousy broker. I used to bitch about Webbroker but now Etrade is my biggest enemy. Best Regards KEITH To: the Chief (2404 ) From: keith massey Friday, Jan 15 1999 5:56PM ET Reply # of 8219 All in all it could have been way worse. Sold half LWN at $7.60 and the other half at $7.20. Down $3,400 on the trade. Biggest loss I have ever took. I am used to stops costing me $300 at the most when a trade turns bad. I was more worried about LWN gapping down to the $4-5 range and never looking back. Although the news wasn't that bad, any other bad news today (lawsuit or further closings) or a general market dump and this stock could have stayed down for a long time and possibly never recovered. It is very possible that LWN will recover from this level. However it doesn't make sense to hold a trade gone bad in hopes that it can recover when I can use that money in another trade that I can control better. A message to everyone out there: IF I EVER PERFORM A TRADE WITHOUT A STOP LOSS AGAIN YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO BEAT ME INTO A BLOODY LIFELESS PULP AND TAKE ANYTHING LEFT IN MY TRADING ACCOUNTS Best Regards KEITH

To: the Chief who wrote (8218)	4/21/1999 7:13:00 PM
From: AriKirA	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 62348

Chief, I think this might be a good time for me to jump in and tell everyone what happened to me these last few days. Well, it all started with GLE. Once the stock was halted and started running after the gap up I was hoping for a pullback to jump in. I had a bid in at 11.60 which I thought at the time was a reasonable level. Well, that was my first mistake. I was trying to catch a falling knife. Needless to say I did not wait for a confirmation before putting in my bid at 11.60. ALWAYS TRUST YOUR INDICATORS AND ONLY BUY ON A SIGNAL GENERATED BY YOUR SYSTEM. The following day, I had the chance to sell all or some of my shares for a decent profit on the gap up. The operative word is HAD. I did not sell and ended up selling for a loss when my stop got hit. GREED Never forget the saying : Bulls win, Bears win, Pigs get clobbered! That brings me to talk about BII. Well, annoyed at having lost an opportunity to lock in some profits I tried to make it up with BII. When I heard the PR stating that the Nasdaq listing was approved, I decided to jump in at market. I got filled at 25.75. NEVER PUT IN A MARKET ORDER. I held for the oh so called Nasdaq debut hoping for a gap up to sell into. Needless to say the stock opened lower and dropped like a rock as panic selling and stops accelerated said drop. I had put in a stop limit. You would think that I would be fine right? Wrong. My limit was too tight and they never got the chance to sell my stock during the fall. I ended up selling at 20.95. Finally, I decided to get in at 20.05 thinking it had leveled off. Had to leave the computer for an hour or so only to get back to see it trading just above my stop. I ordered and cancelled my stop saying to myself that it couldn't go lower. Well it closed at 19 and opened at 15 today. NEVER CANCEL A STOP THINKING THE STOCK WILL RECOVER IF YOU ARE TRADING SAID STOCK. I sold at 14.50 for a cumulative two day loss of..... We'll just say that I hope this will encourage everyone reading this thread to make sure you put in your stops even if you get the impression that said stops cause you to lose a profit more times than not.Lost paper profits are just that. Losing you hard earned money is another breed altogether. The first priority as a trader should be preservation of capital. There will always be another stock if you lose 10%. However if you lose 50% well your chances of recovering are quite slimmer. Hope some of you learn from my mistakes. I consider myself very lucky to have people like the ones we have on this thread to help us learn the tricks of the trade. A special thanks to Keith for all his help these last few weeks. I can honestly say that I learned more these last few days in the heat of the action than by reading a few of the more reknown trading books. Too bad I wasn't paper trading! A tip from a friend : if you are thinking of getting involved make sure that you read everything you can get your hands on and that you paper trade before even thinking of trading with your own $$$. Best of luck AK