RamtaJogi— Hacking Life for Money and Fame.

Well, after two GREEN days, finally a RED day for me. Lost total of 520$ today. Here’s what happened:

1. BAC – I entered in BAC few minutes after the market opened. BAC was fluctuating by 20 cents every passing minute, got scared. Did 3 trades and lost 80$ in total. I think I handled it reasonably well minimizing my losses.

2. DRYS – Shorted DRYS (1000 shares at 6.8$) at around 10:18 and was waiting patiently for it to crack up. It moved up till 6.9 and was bouncing off 6.80 repeatedly, so I closed my position on 6.8 in late afternoon. Just after 20 minutes of closing my position, DRYS tanked to 6.3! Total loss: 10$ of commissions.

3. C – My biggest blunder. Looking at how I screwed up BAC trade multiple times, I thought I would trade C. Seeing how BAC was moving up, I thought C will move up as well and bought 2000 shares at 4.08. Well, high of the day was 4.10 and then C was bouncing between 4.05 and 4.00.

As market close was approaching, I was wondering what to do with my C position. Generally, I am strictly against o/n hold but as I was down by almost 160$ and stimulus bill coming out tomorrow, I thought may be it’s worth holding C o/n. When C dipped below 4$ near market close, I bought 1000 more shares at 3.95$ bringing my average price down to 4.04.

I was watching aftermarket action closely and found CNBC news that there is no ‘bad bank’ plan in rescue package. C started drifting down in aftermarket and so did BAC. I closed my position at 3.91$ with total loss of 430$ inclusing commissions. Ouch.

Well, this is it. No more overnight holds for me. No more plays based on anticipation of news. I will either play the actual news or price/volume action.

Overall, I feel that I managed my BAC and DRYS well but screwed up my C trade completely. Since last two trading days, I was flying in the air and C brought me down to the earth (for my own good). As I wrote in the title of this post, trading makes sure that you stay humble.

Status as of end of Feb 9th:

Positions closed for Gain: None

Positions closed for Loss: C (-430$), BAC (-80$), DRYS (-10$)

Open Positions: None