March 2015 Trade Lessons Learned

After my results each month, I’m gonna create a separate post that details the lessons I should take from my wins and losses. Even though it’s in the results post, I feel having it separate will make it easier to learn from. Especially after a month of crappy trading like this one.

March WMT Trade:

Just because everyone’s buying doesn’t mean I should. I need to stick with my stock picks for the month, picking new stocks if and ONLY IF they meet my pattern criteria. And I must have an out price for every trade.

March AAPL Trade

By now I should be able to recognize a “buzz trade”. This was one and I timed it perfectly. The second I see green in a buzz trade and I’m marginally satisfied with my profit, get out of it.

March DAL Trade

This was a normal valley/peak trade, and should confirm my faith in the airline stocks. The stocks dropped again on the week of the 23^rd, and the airline stocks bounced up again.

March FB Trade

Keep to my trade strategy when it comes to announcements (buy 10-15 minutes beforehand). Check time zones to confirm start time. Had I done this, I would have made some money.

March WWE Trade

Keep to my trade strategy when it comes to announcements. Also, I should ALWAYS have an “out” price, even when I’m 100% sure a stock will rise. My “out” price for WWE would have been $16.00, and I would have cut my loss by over a thousand dollars. 

Missed Opportunities

 

A waste of good research

I had a chance to buy DWA and didn't. I tracked it for two weeks because of a movie that was coming out on the week of the 23rd, called "Home". The international numbers were strong, so I was definitely interested. Just before I was about to buy, a few analysts trashed DWA and their chances to recoup the $132 million dollar budget for the movie. I got discouraged and didn't buy. Home made $54 million in its opening weekend, the stock was up by 8% Monday morning, and I was kicking myself for letting analysts influence my stock picks. Analysts don't know a damned thing until AFTER THE FACT, so their words should never hold more weight than my actual research.

Okay, that concludes my very first Lessons Learned post. Hopefully April’s will have a lot more positives than negatives.