sold all my FRM at $11.40

bought 500 shares of SPKL @$1.82

Lessons learned: 52 week high != continue to climb; good news != continue to climb; when it climbs high enough, sell

Updates: from the past few days, I bought more shares of QXM and VMW when they went down and sold 60 shares of CHNG at $14.00, sold all my LFC at around $100.89 (darn, who knows that they were going to fly this high today!)

To sell tomorrow: I’ll watch for FRM, it broke its 52 week high today so it should still climb tomorrow and I’m considering what price should I sell tomorrow…. FRM ususally doesn’t go up too much – 10% would be a lot and early morning limit should be set higher

To watch to buy tomorrow: SNEN, SPKL

Another green day, another big green day. October is an interesting month – with the unemployment data and all the earnings release, it’s going to be a fun month.

this is my current holdings:

stock                       shares           bought            current             gain/loss 

QXM                        70                 9.80                11.97                 22.13%
FRM                        60                  8.74                10.40                19.02%
LFC                          12                 89.08               96.51                7.54%
VMW                       10                 91.05               101.61              10.09%

Apparently this looks good but I’ve made *A LOT* of mistakes during this period, let me tell you.

I sold 30 shares of QXM @$9.25 ($9.25!! Yes, I know!), and then I sold 50 shares of QXM @$9.60… both times I sold at a loss;
I sold 59 shares of FRM @$8.90…

Guess picking a good stock is not all that hard – you look at their business model, you look at their estimate earnings and P/E, you look into how much debt it has. However, the tricking park is when to sell, hold and buy. I don’t believe the analysist rating (however, CAPS is good to look at) and one thing I’ve learned is that if you are confident about the stock you are holding and the market, you should never panic when the price drops, you might need to keep it a bit longer but it will rebound. When the stock is in a uptrend but the price actually dropped, it’s a great buying opportunity.

In Aug-Sep subprime crisis, stocks went up and down much faster so I shouldn’t use my one week thing to judge how long I’ve been holding a certain stock.

So, what am I going to do now?

Stocks that I’m currently holding – I’m very confident in FRM, QXM and VMW. If the price drops I will actually buy more. VMW earnings are coming in later this month, definitely no sell before that;

Stocks on my wishlist – CHNG, CDGT, STV, NOV ( I will get up early tomorrow for them)
CHNG: China natrual gas, it has been doing really well lately, dropped today… I might want to buy tomorrow.
STV: IPO on Oct 5 with 75% return already. It sounds very risky but hey, high risk high return…
NOV: recommended by NOV… seeking buying opportunities…

Stock that I’m not sure – LFC: it has been doing really well lately but I think it’s slightly over-valued. However, there are just good news that they opened new branches and i will keep holding it when there’s some correction, , maybe.

I set QXM at $8.19…. F**K,  look at it now! Daily high was $9.05 and right now it’s $8.90… How come I set the limit price so low?

Man I have to get up early from now on…

It’s ridiculous that I never care enough to get a carwash, but I had one anyway on saturday. And then it has been raining since Sunday! Good that my car is still clean.

And what’s more ridiculous, is that this is the exact same situation for my stock trading. Friday was a perfect opportunity for me to sell… but I didn’t… and it has been down since. But of course, by sticking to my rule of buy at low price limit order, there’s no loss.

 So I figured out a few things today:

1. Zecco doesn’t charge me any comission fee, however, it definitely takes longer for me to transfer cash. (On Fidelity you immediately have the buying power even though the money hasn’t been settled, but on Zecco it took about 1-2 days). In order to make my short-term strategy work, I decided to move an extra $1000 into my Zecco account, just for emergency buying opportunities (man, I missed AEY today! It dropped under my wishlist price and then climbed up so much!);

2. For a trader like me, choose “Day” instead of “Good until Cancelled”. Why? Because I usually adjust my orders the night before market opens, and right before I go to bed. It takes a while (at least on Fidelity) to cancel the order when it is after-hour. As a result, when I cancel an order, it stays as “Pending Cancel” and I couldn’t make another order;

3. Don’t wait until late in the night to do my research. ESPECIALLY DONOT PASS MIDNIGHT. It’s very important for me to look at the daily high, daily low and intraday price. Once it’s past-midnight, everything gets reset and it’s so hard for me to do my research!

Re-visit the stocks of interest / deserves mentioning:
- CRZ: I’m DEFINITELY interested in this stock. I like the curve and pattern like you can make 10% short-term. But it has been gone up a few days in a role that I won’t buy until it goes down a bit;
- FRM: This is a great stock and I would love to buy when there’s a price around $8.10;
- ZNH/LFC: two China-based stock and in order to stay diversified, I will only buy one, depending on which one is hitting my desired price sooner and closer – ZNH @$71.25, LFC @$73.30;
- GS: it’s going up tomorrow, so no buy tomorrow. Looking for a buying opportunity around $195;
- ZBB: well, the symbol is ZBB, what can I say (just kidding!)… this is a great one.. but you need to get rid of it quickly too… next time when it goes under $3.40 (maybe even $3.45);
- UVE: it’s a great stock, but small volume. With the market doing so well, I prolly won’t buy until it’s around $5.50 again;
- AEY: Sorry I give up on you;
- QXM: Sorry I give up on you, trying to sell once I find a reasonable change;

 Wuwu.. I’m so tired now… remember… I should do stock preparation earlier!

Setting limit order for LNX at $5.86… I don’t think I will be able to hit it on Monday… but hopefully by Tuesday.

WishList (although I have to say, these three might be hard):

FRM @<$8.00
AEY @ <$7.00
CRZ @ <$14.50

 So today, as I re-think about my strategy here again, yes I have to admit that it’s aggressive and of course, not easy. Well, it’s really not that hard to make 20% in 2 weeks counting from the day you bought the shares to the day you sell. However, how to make this continous and keep the cash flow is the hard part – otherwise you are taking a break between your 2 weeks. It takes time for the new stock that you want to buy to drop to the price that you want to buy, also it takes 1-2 business days for your money to be settled so that you can buy something new again. I definitely need to come up with a better timing so that I don’t have this long break thing.

However, lets try to hit the very first milestone first.

Bought 128 shares of QXM at $7.73, but since I bought through Zecco, there’s $0 comssion fee $989.44. To be honest, I’m sortof worried about this one… so I will probably keep a closer look…

So as for right now 09/13/2007, here is how I allocate this total amount of $2002.28:

$984: 200 LNX
$989.44: 128 QXM
$28.84: cash