Hello ladies and gentlemen,
My name is Alex and I'm rather new to the boards. I've been lurking and reading here for a little while now, and since I've got two trades under my belt (both were successful, but I think I was lucky), I thought I'd post them here for any advice. After all, when we teach others' we learn as well, so feel free to teach me a thing or two.
I started off with $5,000 because I figured that this would be enough money to purchase what I would consider to be a significant amount of stock for the type of trading that I wanted to do. My risk tolerance is to lose no more than $1,000 before walking away from trading and taking some time off.
Trade Number One:
Stock: HFU.TO
Date: April 21st, 2009
Bought: $5.94
Sold: $6.13
No. of Shares: 800
Profit: $152 (minus the bleeping commission of $58)
Chart:
I've been reading a book by Barry Rudd called 'Stock Patterns for Day Trading' and that has been my main source of education up until this point. Plus I've also been reading a few websites, and watching a few YouTube videos. I opened up my Tax-Free Savings Account with TD Waterhouse and thought that it would be nice to celebrate it with a trade.
I saw what appeared to be a banner pattern and waited for the breakout. As this was my first trade, I was hesitant to buy, but once I saw that the price broke the resistance point of yesterday's closing price, I jumped in on it. I sold at 11:20am, when I saw that the price stopped directly rising and dropped a little bit. Needless to say, I was extremely nervous when I sold and sold more out of sheer panic rather than being wiggled out at 1/8 of a point. Overall not bad for 20 minutes of watching the price rise. This trade was more to get my feet wet.
Trade Number Two:
Stock: HFU.TO
Date: May 5th, 6th, 2009
Bought: $7.04
Sold: $7.31
No. of Shares: 700
Profit: $189 (minus the bleeping commission of $58)
Chart:
This trade was a scary one for me, because the price did something that I did not expect it to immediately after I purchased my shares.
I felt that I had my reasoning down pat on this trade. I saw that the resistance was at $7.00, which was the high of the day. It tapped $7.00 twice before going back down to $6.95 and hovering in between these two numbers. I saw the price consolidate from 12:15pm until 2:00pm when it broke through the resistance level. My purchase price target was $7.04 and that's the price my orders were filled at. I had a stop price of $6.93 in my mind that I told myself that I would enforce no matter what happened. My exit price was going to be $7.20. I purchased the stock at 2:20pm, and in the next five minutes after that watched it perform an about face and make its way down to $6.96. Thankfully it reversed, but the stock closed at $7.05; a mere $0.01 above my purchase price!!!
I was rueing not selling at $7.14, where I would have at least made my commission fees and a profit of $14. (I know, $14 is nothing, but I see it like piloting a plane...any crash that you can walk away from is a good one, right?)
So now here I was, stuck after the bell waiting for the next day to come around. I had to work a night shift that night and got off work at 7am. I didn't sleep when I got home for fear of not being able to wake up in time. I had kept my eye on the futures market for some indication of what I could expect the next day. Earlier in the night the outlook looked bleak, but surprisingly by the morning the day looked a lot brighter. HFU opened up at $7.29 and I became incredibly excited. As is the norm, there was some wild fluctuation in the first 5 minutes. I saw the price rise to $7.34 and fall down to $7.21. When the price rose back up to $7.33, I debated hanging on to the stock for a while longer. Then I thought "Don't be greedy, Alex. Sell it." and I sold at $7.31.
I couldn't immediately go to sleep afterwards because of the rush of making a profit when I had expected to take a loss. Needless to say, I know that I was incredibly lucky on that second trade.
So, with all that being said, I would love to get some feedback from some of the more experienced traders here on the board. I suppose the issue that leaves me scratching my head the most is why the sudden reversal after breaking resistance on the second trade. Did I draw the resistance line incorrectly? What could I have done to try to predict that? Was it even predictable?
If you have any other advice to offer outside of the scope of my questions, I will gladly take it. I know that I have been lucky in these past two trades...what I really want to do is cut luck out of the equation as much as possible. :clover:
Thanks for your time, and thanks for reading my rather long-winded post.
Alex
My name is Alex and I'm rather new to the boards. I've been lurking and reading here for a little while now, and since I've got two trades under my belt (both were successful, but I think I was lucky), I thought I'd post them here for any advice. After all, when we teach others' we learn as well, so feel free to teach me a thing or two.
I started off with $5,000 because I figured that this would be enough money to purchase what I would consider to be a significant amount of stock for the type of trading that I wanted to do. My risk tolerance is to lose no more than $1,000 before walking away from trading and taking some time off.
Trade Number One:
Stock: HFU.TO
Date: April 21st, 2009
Bought: $5.94
Sold: $6.13
No. of Shares: 800
Profit: $152 (minus the bleeping commission of $58)
Chart:
I've been reading a book by Barry Rudd called 'Stock Patterns for Day Trading' and that has been my main source of education up until this point. Plus I've also been reading a few websites, and watching a few YouTube videos. I opened up my Tax-Free Savings Account with TD Waterhouse and thought that it would be nice to celebrate it with a trade.
I saw what appeared to be a banner pattern and waited for the breakout. As this was my first trade, I was hesitant to buy, but once I saw that the price broke the resistance point of yesterday's closing price, I jumped in on it. I sold at 11:20am, when I saw that the price stopped directly rising and dropped a little bit. Needless to say, I was extremely nervous when I sold and sold more out of sheer panic rather than being wiggled out at 1/8 of a point. Overall not bad for 20 minutes of watching the price rise. This trade was more to get my feet wet.
Trade Number Two:
Stock: HFU.TO
Date: May 5th, 6th, 2009
Bought: $7.04
Sold: $7.31
No. of Shares: 700
Profit: $189 (minus the bleeping commission of $58)
Chart:
This trade was a scary one for me, because the price did something that I did not expect it to immediately after I purchased my shares.
I felt that I had my reasoning down pat on this trade. I saw that the resistance was at $7.00, which was the high of the day. It tapped $7.00 twice before going back down to $6.95 and hovering in between these two numbers. I saw the price consolidate from 12:15pm until 2:00pm when it broke through the resistance level. My purchase price target was $7.04 and that's the price my orders were filled at. I had a stop price of $6.93 in my mind that I told myself that I would enforce no matter what happened. My exit price was going to be $7.20. I purchased the stock at 2:20pm, and in the next five minutes after that watched it perform an about face and make its way down to $6.96. Thankfully it reversed, but the stock closed at $7.05; a mere $0.01 above my purchase price!!!
I was rueing not selling at $7.14, where I would have at least made my commission fees and a profit of $14. (I know, $14 is nothing, but I see it like piloting a plane...any crash that you can walk away from is a good one, right?)
So now here I was, stuck after the bell waiting for the next day to come around. I had to work a night shift that night and got off work at 7am. I didn't sleep when I got home for fear of not being able to wake up in time. I had kept my eye on the futures market for some indication of what I could expect the next day. Earlier in the night the outlook looked bleak, but surprisingly by the morning the day looked a lot brighter. HFU opened up at $7.29 and I became incredibly excited. As is the norm, there was some wild fluctuation in the first 5 minutes. I saw the price rise to $7.34 and fall down to $7.21. When the price rose back up to $7.33, I debated hanging on to the stock for a while longer. Then I thought "Don't be greedy, Alex. Sell it." and I sold at $7.31.
I couldn't immediately go to sleep afterwards because of the rush of making a profit when I had expected to take a loss. Needless to say, I know that I was incredibly lucky on that second trade.
So, with all that being said, I would love to get some feedback from some of the more experienced traders here on the board. I suppose the issue that leaves me scratching my head the most is why the sudden reversal after breaking resistance on the second trade. Did I draw the resistance line incorrectly? What could I have done to try to predict that? Was it even predictable?
If you have any other advice to offer outside of the scope of my questions, I will gladly take it. I know that I have been lucky in these past two trades...what I really want to do is cut luck out of the equation as much as possible. :clover:
Thanks for your time, and thanks for reading my rather long-winded post.
Alex
