Despite me being so gung ho telling people not to short Converted Organics (COIN) all day yesterday, I saw the fluff news this morning coupled with a lack of incredible volume, so I shorted 300 shares at $13.50, thinking it didn’t have enough juice to break the key $14 price. Now this is what a trading addict does—sets rules and break them.
In my post last night, I stated clearly:
“Ideal trade for newbies would be to buy on a clean breakout on strong volume—think 5million+, everything else is just small moves that can easily reverse.”
Well, that was a good call because it was wrong of me to short, win or lose, I didn’t have the odds on my side, and within a half hour, I covered my shares at $13.85, for a stupid $100 loss. I was right to cover in that it went all the way up to $14.30, wrong in the sense that that breakout failed, as it’s now back down to $13.45.
Again, look at what I said last night, we got a clean breakout past $14, but the 3 million share volume is weak, so we’re getting small moves back and forth. From here, who knows, the pattern isn’t perfect so there’s little predictability. I’ve seen enough of these to know what I’m talking about, now I just gotta work on my patience.
“The only time I really ever lost money was when I broke my own rules.”
“Throughout all my years of investing I’ve found that the big money was never made in the buying or the selling. The big money was made in the waiting.”
Every time my impatience gets the best of me, I’ll post these quotes. That way when I make these mistakes—as I inevitably will again—you’ll at least benefit!
Posted in 101bad, Bad Trades, Impatience, Polls