I made a bad stock trade this morning. There, I said it.
Given that, I still made a bunch of money, but had I not let emotions get involved I would have made more money. Here is the story:
I bought BRK.B about a month ago for $3,404 per share. Over the last month is dipped down below $3,300 and slowly came back. I bought it because I knew it was going to split 50:1 in the near future, and I wanted to capitalize on the price increase I (correctly) expect would happen.
Yesterday the split was announced. The stock was way, way up. This morning it split. It went up more. The market opened, it went up more. I put in a stop order, it touched it for a second and went up more. So, I locked in a profit of over $200, but it could have been more.
I traded on emotion. I was so excited that I was right, I had to lock in my profit shortly after the market opened. That was around 9:45am Eastern, 15 minutes after the market opened. Had I been patient and set things up correctly, I could have made an extra $100.
But then it went back down. I ended up buying it back for .80 less than I bought it for. Good deal right? I did it again. I got impatient and sold it for a modest gain. Had I been patient, and let emotion take a back seat, I would be up an extra .50 per share right now. That is a lot with 50 shares.
So, I made about $220 after trading fees. Not a bad day. If I could do that every day, I would be in pretty good shape. But I did learn a valuable lesson. Be calculated and leave emotion at the door when you are buying and selling stocks.
