Today was a busy day for me because I made a lot of adjustment to my portfolio.
In the beginning, $AAPL looked like a racehorse getting anxious to get out of the starting gate. At market open, $AAPL had some volatile range but once it settled down a bit I bought a starter position with a stop below the previous pivot-low for a close stop. Price sped off quickly and I moved my trailing stop quickly as well; but before I knew what happened I got stopped out for profit. $AAPL then gyrated between +$6 & +$7 area so I decided to leave it alone.
$DDD looked good also in the chart so I bought a starter position as well.
$FB opened up and was trading above the half-way point of last Wednesday bullish engulfment bar, so I bought back my position.
$DCTH was acting uncommitted so I decided to sell half of my position to lock in gain. I didn’t want to take chance of giving back my gain while I wasn’t looking. However, later in the day, $DCTH showed a strong resiliency in the $1.91 area so I bought back my position I sold earlier plus some.
I found the charts on $MNKD and $APRI wanting last night so I was watching them in the morning. Price actions looked good and holding well so I bought starter position on them.
Meanwhile, $SZYM was on a tear to the downside and I had a feeling that this stock was not meant to be for me. Again, for the upteen times, I sold down the position to cut losses and minimize exposure even though I told myself I would stick this one to the end. But I was holding too much and I found an excuse to sell by reason that my money has a better probability to recover losses by putting it in $MNKD and $APRI where the upward force still exists. If you are ever being indecisive about cutting losses; find another more compelling reason to force yourself to do so. In this case, I want to re-balance my biotech holding by reducing $SZYM and increasing $MNKD and $APRI. I don’t want to use existing cash so that force me to scale down $SZYM to 38% of original position.
Once the allocation was executed, I felt good even though I had to eat a big losses on $SZYM. The thing about losses is that I know I can make them back; so I don’t sweat too much over it.
The charts on $POT, $FB, $DDD started to look like a balloon running out of hot air. They looked horrible despite the fact that they were up during the first half of the day; without hesitation, I sold them all for small losses except for $POT which was breakeven. You see, when the daily chart starts to look bad, I will NOT hesitate to sell my position especially when I see that the losses will be small. Again, with hindsight, it paid to act fast and decisively since all three were down much further than my selling prices.
$MNKD went through some intra-day retracement and I took the opportunity to add a bit more.
$S was neutral all day so I left it alone.
Seeing $PACB was trying to bounce a bit, I bought a small position so I wouldn’t forget about it.
Current holdings:
LRAD, AMRN, TINY, S, MNKD, APRI, SZYM, DCTH, PACB and 39% cash.
My 2 cents.
The trades I made in the journal were time-stamped in twitter
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How much time does it take to do your taxes? And how many pages is your form 8949?
Don’t ask. I filed my tax electronically now. Before the brokers were required to include cost basis data, it took me a long time. I used to have a tradelog database (subscription based) to keep track of my cost basis and it was a pain-in-the-ass to maintain. Now that brokers are required to include cost basis, my tax filing is actually quite easy now; although I need to review them for accuracy.