Patience is not my virtue. Since I've taken over active managment of my stocks, i.e. the low point of the year; I have done reasonably well. I am up 15% YTD, and about 30% since my low. However I have yet to learn when to take profits and when to be patient. I tend to buy stocks that I know have value. Yet I can't seem to hold them when they are down; I fret and watch every single hundreth place move up and down. And when they are up; I can't help but hold them, hoping for ever additional dime per share. These two tendencies have cost me. I have yet to figure out; what the "happy" buy in price and "exit" price are. I look at the day's trends and decide at the moment what they should be. As the trends change; I to change my goals. Oh we're up 4%, maybe I can squeeze out 1 more. Oh I'm down 2%, let's avoid the other 1%. Today, I lost out on both ends. At the end of the day both stocks came back up, and although I took profits and one and minimized my losses on the other; both could have ended up better.
Sigh; sometimes you have to learn to cast the die and not constantly recast it. For example, after my fretful selling of the day; I tried to buy into AYR @ the low 18s. I saw it drop rapidly, and then reset my price to sub 18. What happened then? Its now back to 19. My fear of catching the knife is so well honed that I lost out on an easy 5% gain back. Lessons learned.
Out of AFSI at 15.65. In at SWIR at 15.2 and out at 14.9. Up for the week. Down for the day.
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