OT
Hindsight is wonderful but I was making a day trade, no more. In after hours, had I held both positions, I would have been hammered on BIDU and making a bundle on AAPL. As of now, I would have made out handsomely holding both but...and its a big but...what if AAPL hadn't beat? Then I'd have been down huge on 2, $100K positions. No, when day trading, I stick to the short term setups and was happy to squeeze out nearly $1k. Since I had expected a larger bounce in BIDU, I failed to pull the trigger on a $500 or $600 quick gain (in nearly 10 minutes into the trade). That was foolish of me to let it end up a loser and truly should have had a stop in place to trigger a cash out once the gain had deteriorated to $300 to $250.
I'm getting much better at these types of moves but I failed yesterday with BIDU. To be honest, being away from the market for a week is enough for me to lose some of my trading "rhythm". Probably should have let AAPL have more rope and quite possibly would have had another $500 in the same trade. Truly not second guessing but adding roughly $500 to $700 in yesterdays trades was "on the table" and I feel I simply left it there.
I rarely hold day trades overnight. But I don't mind taking a trade after hours with the intention of selling the next day. I would have done that with BIDU last night but I knew I wouldn't be free to check the market until this afternoon, so I stayed away.
I think many people who trade put themselves into trouble by not sticking to these types of simple disciplines. Keep the day trade as a day trade. Step aside during earnings. Yes, there will be times like yesterday where you can "nail" an AAPL but there are way too many other times where a company's earnings will be met with "sell-the-news" first. No matter how good the earnings were, sometimes the good news gets lost in either a "poor" headline or simply the traders smelling blood. Looking at BIDU, I thought earnings were decent at a glance but the stock was off $17 after hours. It's gained back $12 of those dollars by this afternoon!!
No, better safe than sorry and live to trade another day. The more I stick to this principle, the better I trade and I sleep very soundly knowing that no matter what the world brings overnight, I won't have to wake up with a massive loss.
Good trading, all!
jmo
TO |
