My worst day in terms of money (not percentage but pretty close)
I became the victim of a stock scam today in a false rumor of a buyout of HAR. The timing could not have been worse for me as I was short over the weekend and in I was in the office early today to check how the premarket trading was going for HAR. What had happened is that a press release was issued to many news organizations including AMEinfo.com in the Middle East. AMEinfo didnât do as good of job checking the facts before publishing the press release and google finance picked up on it. this caused the stock to shoot much higher and in fact went over 50% higher while I watched to my horror. I did not see the actual press release but it was read to me. In fact I asked it be read to me a second time as it didnt sound right. My reaction was actually to short more and thats what I did. I did not buy into the news story that is was a real buyout. No other news outlets was carrying the news and if this was real I could only think that perhaps I was actually ahead of the curve with the news story. I started to short more shares but then within the two minutes it went from 26ish to over 35 and I went from highly skeptical of the buyout to fighting for survival of my account. I was put in no choice. I must cover or risk losing my ability to trade. I guess of course thatâs what the intent of the scam was. over a million shares traded in pre market and I was a part of that. I could not ignore that if the price kept going higher I could face being wiped out so I walked away. I started to cover and just like most stop losses I was covering at the worst possible time and causing my own losses by having the bids that I did. I then changed direction again and went long. This again turned into a mistake as I found about the worst time to not only cover my short but to start going long. I did not wait around long with my long and covered that very quickly as it did not move higher. About 45 mins to late (totally save me from today) and about 30 mins after I covered HAR gave out a press release saying the rumor was false. This was about 10 mins before the opening bell. I then traded some more HAR to the short side again reversing the long and actually made a few dollars but covered way too soon as I was mentally done with this mess and wanted to just step away from it. i did contact my broker to see about getting the trades busted but the time limit ran out for island and ARCA ruled against it. As the trading day moved on HAR moved lower and lower. It ended up being down about 17% which of course one may conclude that it just added salt to the wound but actually I feel that it offers reasurance to my initial conclusion that the stock was due for a retrace of the move higher.
- 117612 (my worst trade ever in terms of dollars)
I also closed and covered what remained of my LVS holding in my TS account I made about 120 with that trade but not counting it in the stats here.
I received a signal with PWRD and while I traded it I went pretty small size and very conservative with it as i traded and scalped it during the day. Not a big winner but for a trade that really never worked out well in terms of hitting my profit target I did pretty well with it. Ended up holding it most of the day and closed out near the close.
PWRD + 444
For most of the day I dealt with the mental experience of knowing that I had put myself in a situation that allowed this type of loss to occur and how I can best deal with that. The chat room was great in the support that I received and I would like to say thanks. This trade as bad as it was does not wipe me out. It actually doesnât totally wipe out my gains for the year but did take much of them. For those that want to follow I have gains of a bit over $60,000 for the year so in many ways its not as bad as some are facing during the mid year. I feel like I was able to pick myself off the floor and actually be productive today and make a good trade with PWRD. I think it will be interesting to see how the rest of the week goes. Hopefully the knowledge gained from this experience will make me a better trader in the long run and allow me to find bigger gains going forward.
- 117167 Day / Week
- 106464 Month