I checked the news quickly, and they had positive financial news after the market close yesterday. These types of prehits usually run pretty good. I waited for the open, then waited about a minute to ensure green.
It was green, so I put in a 2000 share buy order for $1.49 limit. Two minutes passed...working...working...NOTHING. The ask price jumped to $1.50, so I changed my order. Working...working...NOTHING. The price then jumped to $1.53, and at the point, I decided not to chase it.
Too bad, because CHCG ended up going to over $1.70, which would've been at least a $400 profit for me.
UUUGGGH! I HATE SLOW OTCBB EXECUTION!
LESSON LEARNED: When buying a OTCBB stock at the open, put your limit a little bit higher than the ask price to give you a better chance of getting filled.
LESSON LEARNED: If it's positive financial news and a prehit, it's probably going to run green, so rather than waiting for green at the open, it might be better to get your day order in before the market opens so that it executes at the open
Yesterday I mentioned how I bought SLAT into the close. Despite an awesome chart pattern, the breakout didn't hold. As soon as SLAT hit $2.50, I got out for a small $56 loss after commissions.
Even though SLAT ended up being a slut, it was still a good trade for me. I had an exit strategy that I stuck with (my strategy was to get out if it went below $2.50), and it's a good thing because SLAT ended up tanking to below $2.20.
You can have winning trades that aren't necessarily good trades (due to luck). You can also have losing trades that are good trades given that you had solid technical reasons for getting into the trade, and you had a solid exit strategy. SLAT was one of those, and if I was ever presented a similar chart pattern, I would play it the exact same way. 7-8 times out of 10, a breakout like that will continue. This time it didn't.
My final play of the day was IDAE. I noticed it hovering right at the $2.20 breakout point from yesterday, so I decided to hop in with 1200 shares at $2.21. However, I got shook out when it briefly dipped below $2.20. It ended up coming back up, and Tim Sykes and others decided to play it, but I decided to stay out. I already used up a day-trade on it, and now I only have 1 day trade left. I need to conserve my day trades for other opportunities. Plus, I was leaving early for the day to go kiteboarding and I knew I wouldn't be able to keep an eye on it.
I probably shouldn't have had my mental stop so tight...I got out at $2.17 for about a $68 loss. Well, $2.17 was as low as it went and it ended up going up over $2.40 before closing at $2.37.
So, overall, I lost a little over $100 today. Now my account is a bit over $6100. I'm still 25% up from the beginning of the month.
No more trades for me today. Instead, I went and did this:
Yep, that's me in the pic. It's a sick sport...I can take my gear anywhere in the world with me, and I don't need a boat and hundreds of dollars of gas to pull me. And there aren't many sports that let you jump 25 feet in the air only to land softly like a feather back onto the water...
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4 comments:
I live your quoted title "How slow OTCBB execution cheated me out of $400"
As I recall, slow OTC execution saved you from entering QMNM.OB at 0.04? Perhaps it works both ways...:) Looking forward to QMNM and USVE this week though
You're right! haha It does work both ways!
The lesson here is to always place a market order in stead of a limit order. Why quibble about a few cents when the stock is gaining dimes? Muddy has spoken of this on the blog I believe.
True, but isn't there a danger in placing market orders that you could end up with a price wayyyy outside of what you were looking for?
For example, when I played UVSE and was watching it, there was this instant where the market price was at 2.5 cents and suddenly there was this huge sell at 1.8 cents that lasted for a second, and then the market price came back to 2.5 cents. Some of the traders on Investorshub saw it too, and thought that someone may have put in a market order and got burned.
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