alevin's Account

[alevin]

Sold 10 shares MGG this am for tiny profit, didn't offset trade fees but am glad to be out anyway, they're paying divvy's>earnings, which I didn't notice before I bought. Put in small day order for SH, didn't fill yet.

[alevin]

Here I go again. Time will tell if this was a smooth move or not. GDXJ-small/mdm gold producer stox ETF. I've been thinking about individual buys, but haven't gotten up the nerve. maybe this will satisfy the urge.

[alevin]

Hmmm. I still have ammunition stockpiled in the Roth. I see that Ebb is recommending EOD buy on SPY and DIA on Monday. I may just do that, haven't traded any of his signals since summer 07. Don't know if I'll be brave enough to go for the QLD signal tho. Need to stick some more $ in the Roth soon for this tax year.

[alevin]

Haven't been here in awhile. Finally got fresh stash to work with in the Roth account earlier this month, should be burning a hole in my pocket but its not. Haven't had time to do enough research to pick new positions I want to take-if any. shorts-I've gotten burned on them, don't enjoy that, would rather be long if anything. Altho....may have to dump the BP here pretty quick and figure out how to do some puts there. Prognosis isn't pretty. GDXJ is doing pretty fine right now at least.

[etftalk]

Good to see you back here again! It's been quiet. I haven't been doing much lately either, although I did do a little buying toward the close today. I'll have a quick trigger finger if the market doesn't rebound by Tuesday.

[alevin]

So I should have sold the BP when I first talked about it 6 weeks ago. I'm such a slow decision-maker. Intuition told me to sell then , but then I talked myself out of it-and slipped down the slope of hope, slow and steady debating with myself all the way. Kind of the inverse of my inner-selftalk all the way up from March 09 when intuition saw that first 90% up candle and said BUY! and then I didn't trust myself to do it-the whole way up. OK.

I finally sold the 20 shares of BP today, for approx 30% loss ($31 and change) from when I bought them at $43 and change last year. If I'd sold at the end of April like I said I was thinking of doing, I'd still have had something like an 80% profit on those shares. dam I am hardheaded and indecisive. Maybe I'm not cut out to be a trader.

Either that or I've just finished taking my learning lumps on both the buy side and sell side for the big trend stuff. I need to trust my intuition on these big trend reversal move indicators, whether it be based on mega-fundamentals like the spill or something I see in the chart that my gut tells me is BIG (which it did last year when I saw that first biiig green candle in early March).

still hanging tight on my other holdings, no buying or selling the past several months, haven't been in the right frame of mind.

[alevin]

today I sold a small holding of GAS (20 shares) for a 16%+ net gain on the trade in the Roth account. Wish I'd taken a bigger position. would have helped to offset the loss on BP in the taxable account. Hey, all I need is one more trade of that size and that kind of gain and I might end up flat for the year between the 2 accounts.

but I can write off the loss on BP against gain on something else if I sell in the taxable account for a gain that size-nothing looking good yet tho for that objective.

At least OptionsXpress has dropped their commissions by 30% recently. signal of deflation, but it may encourage me to find some other good moves to trade into before end of the year. I'm building a list. Right now still deciding on UUP vs. UDN. UUP is looking good, may acquire some tomorrow.

[alevin]

I have GDXJ in the taxable account. doing fantastic at the moment, but I haven't held it quite a year yet, a few months to go. question is sell now while the gains are good, and risk paying the shortterm cap gains, but let it offset the loss in BP....or do I wait the full year for sake of longterm cap gains and hope the gains are enough to offset the loss in BP. what to do, what to do. first time ever trying to play the offset gains vs. loss game, combined with shortterm vs. longterm cap gains tax. such a newb I am. not enough involved to drag in a tax advisor unfortunately.

[alevin]

Hey, I'm back! made it a whole year+ with the GDXJ for longterm cap gains. bought at $26.05, sold at $36.13, could have sold higher sooner but waited til the turn was definite. BarCharts put on mixed buy/sell/hold on long, intermediate and short time frames by now, which I discovered last night-decided not to pull another BP like I did last year.

Problem is, my gain was good but I only had a half position. the commission has dropped by 30% since last year, but aggregate commission bit on the gain was 10%, so net gain was 34%. less taxes, I guess I had a real net gain of about 25% if I calculated correctly. Hmm, I need to go for bigger positions now that I'm getting more comfortable with my own judgement.

sitting on some other small/partial positions at the moment that have been wandering around for past year but finally taking off. WMB, GXF, DBC.

the newest addition to the stable is COUGF-just added to the Canadian TSX index-conventional oil field explorer/producer-just started producing-got a lot of good land to work with. they've taken off since I bought, but come back in a bit. I have a price target in mind, going to sit on it til it gets much closer. I think some of the original owners sold off a bit of holdings when it hit the most recent top-below my target price. Its consolidating now.

[etftalk]

Nice job, alevin!!