UEPS Trade on Apr 17, 2014 09:34 from handycandi_BOWS: Tradervue User Stock Trades.

I bought this because it was starting what looked like a run up the 9EMA. I didn't think out my plan very well in advance, so I had no stop in mind. When it dropped 7 cents, I freaked out and reversed my position.

Then my short started to go up, and two minutes later I reversed my position after losing an additional 17 cents. Again, I had no stop in mind.

Then it started dropping again, and after 4 cents, I knew what to do! That's right, I dumped that loser!

And after losing a whopping $56 plus commissions... it went up the 9EMA just like I thought it would, a total gain of $1.28 at its peak by that time from where I originally bought it.

I took a 90-minute break to regroup, then felt much better.

I noticed the stock was riding up the 9EMA, so I bought when it bounced, putting my stop 5 cents below the 9EMA; I accidentally entered a sell order instead of a stop order, so moments later it sold, and I had to re-buy at the same price I sold it for. I moved my stop with each new candle so that it stayed 5 cents under the 9EMA. The price rose for a while, then I stopped out.

Lessons Learned

I need to have a good plan in place, including my stop. I went into today unprepared. I am having trouble finding time to scan in the evenings because there is always so much to do, so I grab the top gainers and losers list pre-market, but I don't feel very confident about how to handle gaps, so I feel disoriented and panicky the whole time.

I talked to my husband about this, and he is going to help support my effort to do scanning at 4:00 every afternoon by helping handle dinner and homework and such.

Questions

I get that I panicked the first half of the day. What happened the second half? Looking back, I can see that I should have sold half into the spike at $8.77, and set a stop at my buy price - but at the time, I had no way to know that was a spike... did I? Around 12:40pm the 9EMA started turning downward, which should have caused me to sell, but that was a couple minutes after I stopped out. What should I have done better?