Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Stocks

Awesome. I'll taste-test. It's Noon here right now.

Sprint! Sprint! Sprint! Go! Go! Go! $5.70

Could be $10 by end of year!

Was $2.50 about 4-6 months ago.

Wow. I wonder what happened to Sprint? It went from $5.70 to $4.85 in 5 days. Glad I got out before it became a loss.

Seems all stocks I buy, this happens. It's like letting the air out of a tire. All I have to do is buy a stock, then ssssss.

Just an idea, but maybe you should stop buying individual stocks and start investing in stock market index funds?

I do that in my 401k. Rolled over about 70% of it into a traditional IRA so I can invest in the stock market. I've got about 10 years experience trading with lesser amounts. So far, I've gone from always losing money, to making usually small gains (2 to 10%) without losing money, with only 1 50% gain under my belt as the best I've done, so far. I need to take that to the next level of actually making some money. If only one could short the market in an IRA (without buying an ETF/ETN that shorts the market. Those go down when the market goes up or flat. Kind of like a casino, where the odds are stacked against you).

My biggest mistake was getting started saving money too late in life. Now I've got to pull a rabbit out of my a%*. I mean hat.

You might want to read some information about gambling addiction and how most problem gamblers work up a system that they believe will be good for them . . . because what you're doing . . . it's not investing.

There are investors and there are traders. I fall into the trader category more than the investor category. I've been through the compulsive gambling thing in the past. Been there, done that. I'm not a day trader. I'm more of a position trader. But I would sell a stock as soon as I bought it, if I felt I had made a mistake.

Day trader: Never leave a position open overnight.
Swing trader: From a few hours to a few days.
Position trader: From a few days up to several months.
Long term trader: Hold a position from several months to several years.

Rule #1 is "don't lose money.", Keep a close eye, or close stops on it when you can't watch it. Buy when the stock is moving up, hoping it continues to move up. Sell as soon as it starts to go down, unless it's a small upward correction, requires judgement call.

Each industry requires it's own rules. You wouldn't trade a pharmaceutical stock the same way you'd trade a tech stock.

Where things break down and always fails, is when you don't follow your own rules.

Is trading gamboling? It is at first because you don't know what your doing. But as you gain experience, it becomes more of a skill than a gamble. A good comparison is playing black jack at a casino, where the experienced player would pull back his bet when he sees that the dealer might have a better hand than he has. This is not allowed in the game. But if it were, it would remove a large percent of gambling out of the game.

Work up a system? Yeah, you have to, regardless of what field of work you do. Your results would be truly random without one. This is my system in a nutshell. Go, make money with it. lol.

Big mistakes in stock trading when I first started.

Hold onto a losing stock. Don't ever sell it, until it gets really cheap. This is also called investing.

Buy a penny stock. Watch it become even cheaper.

Hold on to a stock as it slides below your buy point. There's a very good chance, it'll never be that high again, or that break-even event might be months or years away.

Using IBD (Investor's business daily's) guidline to not sell a stock going down until it's lost 8% (hoping it will go back up), will lose you more money in the long run, and you will never make it back up.

Picking stocks on IBD can be a good thing to do, but it's the rare bird that will make you any money. Most of them that are rated A+ have already seen their glory days and are about to turn down. I used to subscribe and did extensive analysis on the stock prices in spread sheets on my laptop. Did this for a few years.

Buying stocks that just took a big hit in price. 90% of these will continue to surprise you at how cheap they can really get.

One more I just thought of, buying a low volume stock, that hardly anyone is buying. This one can be really hard to sell.

So, what stock should you buy?

Find one that has a good story. That has high hopes of future income, and has just been placed in the spotlight with talking heads on CNBC, etc. talking it up. The more exposure, the better. Make sure there is plenty of volume of stocks trading hands. And most importantly, the price is constantly moving up.

Upward stock movement is caused by perception of future expectations.

Watch it like a hawk, because one day soon, weeks, months, maybe a year from now. It's probably going to crash and die. Try to get out at what you think might be the top. (ie learn how to identify a top.)

Oh, and don't buy an IPO (Initial Public Offering) stock. This stock has just started trading recently. Almost always goes down, and it has no past history of trading, so you have nothing to base it's future on.

All of my reits(Canadian) have done well over the last couple of years, the best one gaining about 70-80%. They have all paid 5-8% dividends on top of that. Also have one private reit that pays out 8% virtually tax free.

I would also agree with some of the previous advice, you don't want to lose what you already have...all of my "conservative" stocks are doing much better than the risky high flyers.