A Bad Day In the Gutter

Today was my worst loss in the gutter since June 10th.

Before the market open, oil was up. That meant that a lot of the oil & gas stocks were probably going to run for the day. I had been looking at GCOG yesterday, and almost bought it in the last hour of trading as it had a nice 1 month breakout. It was also a good STEPS/G-Pattern setup.



I didn't buy it yesterday, figuring I'd wait to see how oil/gas was shaping up this morning. Sure enough, it was up, and I saw GCOG was up premarket. The market opened, I saw it go green, so I put in a 500,000 share buy order. Got my fill at .0086 cents. GCOG quickly pushed near 1 cent. I was up $400. That's where I should've exited, but NOOOOOO. I was greedy and wanted to see if it would continue to run higher. It quickly came back down. I then put in an order to sell, but with 500,000 shares....that's a lot to get rid of. I got 335900 filled at $.0085, but then the price went further down so I had to lower my limit order (which cost me another $50 in commissions). Got the rest filled at .0081.

All together, with commissions, it was a $265 loss.

Ouch.

It was a bad trade all around. I should've bought yesterday, not this morning. But the more critical mistake was my exit. I should've exited near 1 cent since 1 cent is significant psychological resistance. I was greedy because last month GCOG ran all the way to 2 cents.

The only smart thing I did was to get out as quickly as possible. Good thing, too, because GCOG ended up falling below .007 cents.

The funny thing was, I had thought, "maybe I should wait for this to break 1 cent before I consider buying". That's what I did with HTOG yesterday and I avoided a bad trade.

Would've, should've, could've.

Maybe I just need to avoid those subpennies, or at least less-than-perfect ones. This is the third or fourth time I've gotten burned on them. It's soooo tempting to play them because they can double, triple, or quadruple in a day.

My account is still up, but that was a hit. I CANNOT make such a mistake again.

A big part of that loss was commissions alone. That's the risk when playing these low, low pennies...if you're wrong, the commissions add to your loss.

LESSON LEARNED: When buying into a G/STEPS pattern, buy in the last hour on the first high volume reversal day, not the next day

LESSON LEARNED: Sell when near significant psychological resistance

LESSON LEARNED: Don't buy a stock that is already near psychological resistance

LESSON LEARNED: Only play sub-pennies if you have ABSOLUTELY PERFECT setups with little downside risk

No other plays for me today. There just weren't any good setups.

Gutter Account Stats:

June 10th: $4823.46
Yesterday: $5339.58
Today: $5073.93

Today's overall loss: $-265.65, or -4.98%
Gain since June 10th: $250.47, or 5.19%

S and P 500 since June 10th: -5.8%

Positions traded for a loss:
GCOG: -$265.64 (a trade I should not have gotten into, or at least exited earlier)