TIM $14,339 (up $20 on the day)
Covered 200 Shares of RIGL @ $23.95
Sold 500 Shares of CACN @$6.20
No Positions Now, 100% Cash
Going into today with two overnight positions, I thought I’d have a decent size move one way or the other. But nope, I got out of both
of my positions, not because I don’t think they’ll continue to drift in the direction I originally thought they would—I do—but I have several meetings and errands today and since neither of these perfect (not by any means—see SCON for some perfectly bearish price action), I got out.
RIGL—I watched all the pre-market strength with my finger on the trigger (gotta cut losses quickly), but aside from a few panicky-type buys, the action was mostly sells, so I held until the market open. I was down nearly $1/share (since the stock was trading up around $24.50-$24.70) within the first 10 minutes of the market open, but I held because the trading volume was pathetic. All of a sudden, the stock tanked to unchanged and I covered my 200 shares at $23.95. Whew! Sure, sure, I took a 25 cent loss and now the stock is down a quick $2/share since, but this was yet another stock that didn’t act EXACTLY the way I wanted it to, so I count myself lucky I only took a $50 loss. The stock could tank another $1 to $2 —and it probly will—but if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing (OK, this quick drop stings a little) because I held firm to my utter lack of trading ability (only hold if the stock acts as expected, if not, cut losses as best you can) and got out before my 11am meeting (we could the what if game all day long as to what if I didn’t have mid-day meetings, wasn’t limited in my day trading, whatever—RIGL is a good stock to play)
(Needless to say, this is the latest example of me making a good call, but not being able to take advantage of it properly (Is it sinking in yet that knowing what to do and doing it are two different things?), hence my determination to teach others to do better than me via my DVD)
CACN—this one acted nicely and they had some nice (if somewhat puffy) news with Yahoo!, but I sold my 500 shares at $6.20 because I’m just not as comfortable going long, especially on a thinly traded stock that’s being pumped by Jonathan Lebed. Nice little gain to offset the RIGL loss.
So, what is perfect price action, take a look at this chart of SCON. Notice the afternoon breakdown of $7.60 yesterday (similar to RIGL cracking $24), but without any bounces, and a straight tank down in the morning. Now, there’s no way anybody can get squeezed of their short on that one and as I said last night, that’s the kind of play I regret not being in.
Off to my meetings!
