Another day has rolled in and out like a cloud on the wind. 😊
I should feel more tired than I do. I haven’t gotten much sleep lately, several days in a row, and last night was no exception. I didn’t get to bed until around 4 a.m. ish, I think, and I couldn’t fall asleep even then. I just sort of… laid there, trying to breathe and calm my brain and body down.
There’s just so much energy flowing through me as I learn the stock trade that I guess the adrenaline is keeping me up and going. Learn. Learn. Learn. And then, of course, me and my numbers. Love me my numbers.
Today… was… a rough one stocks wise. There’s something I still don’t clearly understand about settled cash in my account. I noticed that some of my favorite stocks to watch and trade on (listen to me… I’m three days into this and writing as though I’ve been doing this for a long time. 🙃), were gapping down pretty significantly after market close yesterday and during premarket hours this morning (If you’re not familiar, the terms gapping up and gapping down are used to describe the difference between where the market closed at end of day the previous day and where it opens, which takes into account what’s happened during after hours trading and premarket trading. For example, if a stock closes the day at $20.84/share, and then during after hours goes down $0.57, and then goes down during premarket trading another $1.43, for a total decrease of $2.00, you’d say the stock gapped down $2.00, or X%. Same idea if it gaps up.
Anyway, many of my favorite stocks were gapping down fairly significantly, having lost something like 4% ish? during after hours and premarket trading, so there I was feeling like it was going to be a good day to buy, as it was going down, and would very likely come back up at some point in the day, not to mention that most market watchers consider a good number of these stocks as bargains right now, expecting them to got up significantly over the next year, as the companies are in periods of rapid growth and apparently doing very well.
Anyway, gapping up or down during extended hours trading doesn’t tell you exactly what’s going to happen, obviously. It could hit market open, and immediately do the opposite, so I waited. I wanted to see what the trend was, and I wanted to see where the resistance began (resistance being defined as the point where people start being hesitant to buy or sell, I believe. Where there’s sort of a hold, and the momentum slows to a standstill, popping up and down in very small increments instead of dropping or rising regularly.
So… when the market opened for the day, I waited and watched two of my favorite stocks, and they kept going down. And down, and down! I was waiting for the resistance, as I figured, like happens the vast majority of the time, that it would hit it’s bottom, and then start to rise a bit.
My (brief) experience thus far says that you’re not likely to regain all that was lost, but you’re very likely to regain enough to turn a nice little profit if you were able to buy somewhere at least reasonably near the trough, percentage wise (for example, if the stock goes down $2.55, and you manage to buy at the $2.35 but not all the way to the $2.55 trough, oh well. Odds are the stock will go back up a decent bit, and you’ll likely make some money–even just a little.
Anyway, so I watched these two stocks go down and down and down… And then… when one was down something like 7% and the other 9%, I watched and waited. And there it was, the resistance. The momentum died, and the stocks bounced up and down by a handful of cents. I wanted to be sure, so waited a little longer, and the stocks started to go back up. So I bought! I didn’t get in at the total trough because I wanted to play it safe be sure–better to make less profit and be in the green and moving than to make no profit or lose a bunch. So I bought, and I bought a bit more because of the significance of the downswing.
And the went up, and up, and up, and quickly I was in the green and had could sell and make over a $100. I went to sell but was greeted by a message saying that I didn’t have enough settled cash to sell.
😶
What?!?! I made sure I had enough to be able to sell. But, nope. There’s something I still don’t understand about settled cash that I’ll get figured out before Monday when the market opens again. Monday is gonna be a crazy day stock wise, but I’ll get to that in a bit.
Anyway, so there I was ready to sell and make my quick $100, having accurately anticipated what was happening (at least to that point). But I couldn’t sell!!!
I quickly went over to my bank account to wire money to my trading account as quickly as I could, so that I could sell, but it takes like… 20 or 30 minutes to get the money in my account.
What happened during those 30 minutes?
😬😬😬
Ouch. The stocks both tumbled. I bought at about 7% and 8.5% down, respectively, and after they made their first big corrective swing (where I should have made $100 and been ready to buy again, the same stock or another), the stocks plummeted, and I watched helplessly because I couldn’t sell and make my profit. Down. Down. Down. Down. Down. Down. Down.
😬
Fortunately, these are good long-term stocks to hold, as they’re great companies that are widely accepted to be bullish for the year.
The stocks seemed to hit some significant resistance again about 8% and 10% down respectively (after having gone up enough for me to have been able to make money, they went all the way back to my buy-in point, and then they kept going from there. Down down down.
At that next level of resistance, surely it was the trough, no? I watched and watched, and the resistance seemed strong. Lots of people trade on emotion and out of fear. Warren Buffett, quite possible the best trader of all time, says “Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful.” Not the nicest of quotes, but it illustrates the point, don’t get caught up in emotion. Buy when it’s a good buy, regardless of what others are doing who might be caught up in emotion.
Anyway, so what did I do? I bought more stock because even though it was way down, and I was already down on the day, overall, I considered it a fabulous buying price. Not to mention, if it went up from there, I’d make a good profit on at least those shares, and that might balance out the others.
Well, something happened that… just… well… it happens, but it’s not usual for these stocks. I bought again, and the market resistance evaporated, and it went down… and down… and down. Had I the ability to sell what I’d bought (enough settled cash), I’d have bought again, honestly. The buy was stupidly good, in my opinion.
But now I was down over $700 on the day already, and the upswings that nearly always happen? Oh… it swung up and down, but it stayed waaaaaaay down. The swings okay, but because of how far it had dropped, they yo yoed to smaller degrees and in the loss range.
By this time, my adrenaline was pumping. But… it was a good buy, perhaps even a great buy. I just didn’t percentage wise, I got in about 3/4’s down on the swing. That’s not to bad for when it goes back up. Good companies. Good buy.
I couldn’t let myself get too worked up over the bright red numbers indicating the rapidly fluctuating up and down of how far in the red I was for the day. And boy did it fluctuate significantly down as low as $770 maybe, scratching back to being down $200 ish for the day, then way back down–bouncing all over the place, but not going back up into my green territory for where bought.
I ended up doing two wire transfers to get enough money in my account to cash out the stocks should they manage to make it back to my positive territory.
Well… there was nothing I could do. I had to wait for the wires to go through, and so I went out and started working on cars for the day, resigned to the likelihood that I might be significantly down for the day but trusting in the fact that the buys were good buys, at least according to my research, as well as market forecasters.
It was hard to focus, but it was good to get out working. I went to the junkyard and picked up a part I needed for my mom’s Durango, as I had a battery fly forward and smash the climate control knob (internally), so I got that. I returned a battery core to Mercedes. I returned a starter and battery core to AutoZone, and then I went to a job that I should have said no to, but they were long-time customers, and… ugh… yeah.
He’s got a vehicle that no one can figure out, and he wanted me to put in a used ECU for it, which is annoying, but I’d done it once for him a couple years ago or so, so I figured it shouldn’t be too bad to do it again.
Except this time the ECU was a used one that wasn’t programmed, so it still had the wrong VIN number associated with it. What did that do? It locked up the anti-theft system, making it so the vehicle couldn’t start, as it had conflicting VIN numbers.
Lovely. I spent like 4 hours, maybe more, over there, I think. It was… ugh. In the end, I gave up. That’s the last time I’m going to work on that vehicle. No one has been able to figure it out, and they’ve spent thousands. It’s got some phantom problem that causes misfires that they’ve spent thousands to get figured out (not with me… only a little bit of that with me.
Now, it was coming up on 3 p.m. as I was coming to grips with the fact that I was probably not going to get anywhere with that truck, and 3 p.m. is when the market closes, and I can’t buy or sell anymore until Monday. I’d set alerts to get text messages if the stocks reached a particular level, so I could be there and be ready for action.
To my surprise, I got an alert! After going down nearly $800 on the day, both my stocks had been creeping back towards my buy-in levels. With two minutes left in the trade day, I put in sell orders in the unlikely event that I’d be able to sell my shares if somehow it turned into the green (I use green and red instead of black and read because my stock market charts are in green and red. Just… FYI).
Well… the short end of it is that the stocks didn’t sell. No one wanted to buy them at my selling price. So… I still have them. Lots of them. 🙃
The good news, though, is that after going down to nearly $800 negative on the day, they climbed up enough to get me to $15.03 in the green!
Wahoo!!!
Now, of course, I can’t count those in my totals, as I haven’t sold anything yet. I’m still just 7 for 7 on my completed trades, and there’s still plenty of time for these to tank again. Or… they good go back up. Honestly, I’m expecting them to go back up. I think it was a day where investors were afraid, for whatever reason (Covid is hitting some countries hard again, and that’s causing some concerns in the markets, for one). Russia is affecting stuff, etc.
So… I won’t figure out those trades until Monday, and we’ll see how it goes! One of the stocks is down a little in after-hours trading again, but only a little bit, and there’s a lot of after-hours trading to go before Monday morning.
Also… one of those stocks has an earnings report that goes public Monday morning before the market opens for the day, so that’s going to be really interesting to see what happens. Normally, as a long-term trader, you don’t want to buy too close to earnings reports because there are often pretty strong swings in relation to the reports, if companies hit their targets/expected numbers, missed them, or even outperformed them.
Somehow, I missed that it was an earnings call day both today for the one and Monday for the other, so… that’s one reason it went down today. As I understand it the one of the companies didn’t make the numbers anticipated, and so people were afraid. But if I’m correct, the company is actually doing really well, and the reason they didn’t make the margin numbers hoped for is that they spent a whole lot on R&D and expansion, etc–something like that. So, like my car business. If I make $10, but I go buy a tool for $5 that’ll help me do the work better, even if my company is doing better and better, buy enough tools, and profits don’t look so good.
Anyway, so… I’m expecting things to level out and rise again for the one stock, and I’m interested to see what happens for the other. Will certainly be an interesting day Monday.
So! It’s a little weird having a decent amount of money in some stocks over the weekend right now. The goal is to get in and get out in the early hours of the day and be done for the day after 30-60 minutes maybe. But today, with my messing up my settled cash again, I dug myself a huge hole to get out of. Fortunately, I’m standing at the ground level of the hole, but since I’m still invested, I’m still standing on the hole, and only time will tell if it sinks or begins building a mound.
On the bright side, had I not screwed up the settled cash, I’d be 9 for 9 right now. So… that’s at least something to think about. 😊 My error was a big one, and the results were super scary, but I didn’t panic. I stayed the course, and I was even able to buy again as it sank lower. I only wish I could have bought a third time, as I would have made a great profit for the day and would have sold and been out at EOD.
Settled cash. That’s the homework. I thought I was golden. But nope. Not golden.
I must have squirreled. Oh, no… didn’t… just part of the story. 🙃
Anyway, feeling bad about the car repair not working out (not that it was my fault, but still… hate giving bad news like that), I went over to borrow something from Miguel in the hopes that I might be able to figure out the issue, but no… no dice. So, feeling bad, I gave him back some of what I’d charged him. I did do most of what he’d asked me to do, but with the issues with the computer not being set to the correct VIN number, and with my scantool not seeming to be able to overcome the issues (oddly), that was all I could do.
The last car of the day was a Chrysler 300 that the young man had a flat on but was using the wrong size of his 4-way tire iron (he had the correct size as one of the four options, but… I guess he didn’t realize it). He mangled his lung nuts so badly that the were completely rounded off. Because of that, I had to sacrifice two of my impact sockets to get the last two of his mangled lug nuts off, smashing them over the rounded lug nuts with a 2 1/2 pound sledge hammer, and then just using my impact to zip them off.
It’s just… good luck ever getting the lug nuts out of the sockets again. 🙃
After that, I headed home, put the part in the Durango (realizing that the new part had a couple broken tabs, but I believe it’s fully functional, and I’m not sure the broken tabs will be noticeable. If they are, I can put the climate control portion of the assembly I just got on the old bezel, and… that should solve that.
After some sweet and sour “chicken” (soy chicken?) that you really couldn’t differentiate from chicken. Was pretty amazing, and after doing… whatever I’ve been doing for the rest of the night, it’s time for bed. It’s 12:30, and that’s better than 4:30, and hopefully with no market opening in the morning and given the fact that I’m sleep deprived, hopefully, I’ll sleep well tonight.
Still whittling down the projects. Waiting to hear back from Missouri. That one’s off my plate until I hear back from them, and this stock thing came up because… as you know, I’m rethinking the equipment rental. Leaning toward either flipping or renting just occasionally, or hiring an operator, but I might just flip, honestly. We’ll see. I loathe the idea of having to be locked down somewhere when I want to be traveling the world making it a better place in every way I can. If I can make enough of an income to live on with this stock trading thing, that would be great, as I can do that from anywhere I have an internet connection.
Love you all. 😊
Lift the World.
~ stephen
Lift the World 