March 2015 Stock Trade Results

2/18/2015

Walmart Stores Inc (WMT)

Bought 100 shares at 86.17

3/04/2015

Sold 100 WMT shares at 82.27 for a LOSS of $404.06

3/09/2015

Apple Inc (AAPL)

Bought 73 shares at $127.41

Sold 73 shares same day at $129.25 for a PROFIT of $119.44

3/10/2015

Delta Air Lines Inc (DAL)

Bought 210 shares at $43.51

3/12/2015

Sold 210 DAL shares at $45.02 for a PROFIT of $303.72

3/25/15

Facebook (FB)

Bought 100 shares at 84.67

Sold 100 FB shares same day at 84 for a LOSS of $81.16

3/30/2015

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)

Bought 900 shares at 16.94

Sold 900 shares same day at 14.38 for a LOSS of $2,333.24

Total Losses: $2,395.30

After the almost $600 profit with Twitter (TWTR) in February, I was feeling really good. I started looking around for something to invest in, and saw an article about how people were buying a lot of Walmart (WMT) stock before its earnings report. This is the second time that I made a decision based on outside influences (TSLA in January), and this one cost me big. My losses would have been a lot less had I designated an acceptable loss for the stock. As it continued to go down, my acceptable losses grew larger and larger as I continued to beam over the Twitter profits. In the end, I lost over $400 on this deal, and the stock is still down. And I didn’t understand why I had hope that it was gonna go back up. Walmart finally raised the wages of the majority of their employees. That means they make less money in the short term. So why would I expect their company to be worth the same and have the same stock price??? Ugh!

After the WMT debacle, I decided to stop listening to everyone and do my own thing. I saw that Apple (AAPL) was having a press conference about the Apple Watch, including the launch date and pricing. Let me say first that I don’t really like Apple products. I love their company, but their products are so non-customizable and annoyingly popular that I continue with my Samsung Galaxy and other companies for my entertainment. And, even though there’s so much hype built around the Apple Watch, I don’t think it’s going to be as big as everyone says it’s going to be over the long term. But the buzz is good and, as I learned with WWE, one can make a pretty penny or two with buzz. So I bought it with a sell target of 129 and checked my phone regularly. The second it hit 129 I sold it. An hour after that, the stock went back to its 127 level and I was giddy. It was my first perfectly timed trade and it felt good. It even felt better than the Twitter trade and I made more money with that! I’ll always be proud of this one.

On the 10^th, the stock market took a dive due to the rising dollar. I saw this as a great opportunity to buy a strong stock, and went to my three airline stocks to choose. My choices were JetBlue (JBLU), Delta Air Lines (DAL), and Southwest Airlines (LUV). I picked DAL because I liked their percentage/price ratio, as a 1% increase with DAL yields more money than a 1% increase with JBLU. So I bought it with a sell target of $45. Once it hit $45 I sold it, but I had the feeling it would go up more. The next day, it went up to $46 but I didn’t really care. I had a price target and didn’t let my emotions hold the stock another day. Yes, I would have made more money. But it would have been a step backward in my quest to not make emotional decisions, so I was happy with my profit.

I passed on a UPS trade that would have made me another $170, as well as a Tesla trade that would have made me $600. I remembered how I felt when I made all that Twitter money last month and it made me hesitate. Thanks to Scottrade taking forever to approve my margin account, the 25^th was the last day I could make a trade before my last move. I felt comfortable with my monthly profit at the time ($19), so I wasn’t in a rush like I was when I bought WMT last month. I decided on Facebook, which was holding their annual F8 conference. I saw on a website that the conference was to start at 10am, so I bought at 9:55am. What I didn’t realize was that I was looking at the wrong time zone, and it was actually taking place at 1pm on the East Coast. Had I known this I would have waited until a little before 1pm, bought FB at around $83.50, and made a neat little profit. Instead, I lost $81.16.

Finally my last (and worst) trade. I was so sure that the WWE stock was gonna go up that I added over $5000 of margin. After Wrestlemania, I felt that their subscriptions should be at least at 1.5 or 1.6 million. Instead, it was at the same 1.3 it was before Wrestlemania. The stock tanked, and I was too stunned to cut my losses early. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for something to happen and I… I let my emotions get the best of me again. I made three MAJOR mistakes here that I should not be making at this stage. The first is that I bought it in the morning instead of just before the announcement like I should have. Had I waited until just before the announcement, I would have seen that the stock was tanking and would not have traded at all. The second major lesson was the same lesson I learned with my first trade experience with trades, which just happened to be with WWE. Buzz trades should be sold as soon as I see green because it will go back down almost immediately. The third was that I didn’t have an “out” price for this trade. Once the stock was at $17.30 in early trading and I was up $350, I should have sold right there. But I was just so sure and I couldn’t let my hopes go fast enough to cut my losses and be happy with the gain. As the stock went down and down, I had no settled “out” price and that allowed the losses to keep mounting.

So March pretty much sucked. I looked for WWE to be the big home run and got beamed in the nuts instead. I really shouldn’t have traded on margin for that WWE trade, but I was just so sure. I lost a ton of money and only have one big trade planned for next month. Times like these I think about Scottrader Joe and whether he was right. Oh well. Guess I’ll find out at the end of the year.