View Single Post
      11-15-2012, 10:15 PM   #1142
Vanity
Private First Class
Vanity's Avatar
Canada
252
Rep
123
Posts

Drives: BMW E90 LCI
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: BC, Canada

iTrader: (0)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. G View Post
Mid-April to now I'm down 29.42%
I was at a high point around then so some loss of profits is to be expected and I kind of just sat through things thinking when I get a chance to get back into the markets I'll even things out.

What sucks is in the past month I'm down 15-18%, so I think it's time to take action and not let my account sit around.

I need to either withdraw and re-invest when I have more time or I need to start watching the markets again. The problem is that I don't have enough time to properly keep track of things and make informed decisions and I usually never enter a trade unless I'm very confident.

I preferred the buy and sit tight for a year type of trades since I've been too busy and I guess my usual picks are no longer the right picks. Apple taking a nose-dive and being one of my larger holdings doesn't help my situation either haha.

PS: I'm not a pro/skilled trader by any means
When you're up on a trade, especially buy-and-hold investments, put a stop loss somewhere in your profits where you'd be more than happy to sell and forget there was even anymore where that came from. Ex. If you had purchased AAPL at 400 and rode it to 700, a stop loss at 650 quite honestly offsets whatever loss you take on the last $50. Just forget about it.

As for the markets, I think we might be in to take out 1325 or rebound sharply since we are so oversold, I just dont know the order. I am fairly positive this is the start of something nasty though. My advice for AAPL is liquidate 50% if you believe it might drop more, allowing you to average down later if it does. And if it doesn't, you still have 50% skin in the game to average in with. Maybe look into dividend stocks. At least if you took a -30% hit, it'd hurt less with a 7% dividend.



Aside from that, where are my traders at? Long time. Today I had a great run. it was a down day so VXX returned +0.89%. I managed to micro-trade that gain into a +3.51% day. Not bad! 4x outperformed the underlying vehicle. Not sure what's gonna happen these days so I'm always position neutral into the close. It allows me to not stay up at night or give a damn what the futures are gonna do. Working wonders on my sleep cycle!
__________________
Appreciate 0