February 2015 Stock Trade Results

2/5/2015

TWTR (Twitter Inc.)

Bought 100 TWTR shares at 41.23

2/6/2015

Bought 100 TWTR shares at $46.18

2/9/2015

Sold 200 TWTR shares of at $46.78 for a $593.31 PROFIT

 

2/18/2015

SCTY (Solar City)

Bought 20 SCTY shares at $56.56

2/20/2015

Sold 20 SCTY shares at $53.90 for a $67.42 LOSS

Total Income for February: $525.89

I did well in February, but things could have been a lot better. My plan was to buy TWTR just before their earnings report and then sell it. Then I was supposed to buy HOT (Starwood Hotels and Resorts World) before their earnings report and then sell. After that, I would watch SCTY to see if it was worth buying and make my move.

I bought TWTR and, as I expected, the earnings report was good and the stock jumped up. So I “sold” the stock once it reached a good profit and everything was fine. I woke up Saturday morning and saw that my profit was even more than before, and I didn’t understand why. Then it hit me. Instead of selling my 100 shares of TWTR, I actually BOUGHT 100 more shares of TWTR. Thankfully I still made profit as the stock continued to go up after the second purchase. But every piece of good news always has bad news. Because I had just sold my TWTR shares on that Monday, my money wouldn’t settle in time to buy HOT and sell the way I wanted. I could have made at least $1000 this month had I did things as planned, but I took it as a lesson learned. From now on I set my phone alarm at 3:55pm, so that I can take a final look at my positions before the stock market closes. Had I caught my mistake and sold before the market closed on that Friday, I would have bought many shares in HOT and killed the month of February.

I watched SCTY and had my reservations against buying it. Zacks gave it a strong buy, but I didn’t see any reason for it to have a good earnings report. Not only that, but the stock had been going up for that entire week, and I simply felt that it was rising to fall. It also didn’t help that it’s another Elon Musk company, and I was still feeling the pain of January’s TSLA trade. But just in case, I decided to buy 20 shares anyway. The stock dropped and has yet to recover (currently trading at $51 a share which is $5 lower than when I bought it).

So the month of February was a success, as I exceeded my $300 monthly quota. I’ve felt what it was like to lose over $750 in January, and then to make $525 in February. Yeah, I like how the latter feels MUCH more.

P.S.: Because I sold JBLU at the beginning of February, that should count towards February's profit and not January's. I'll probably leave it as is and make sure not to do that in the future.