Market Margin Call

(I'll load e-trade image later. Blogger not accepting the upload)

For some strange reason, woman's intuition hole in tinfoil hat or whatever, I elected to lighten up even further on my gold stocks (after my first lighten) and sell all of my open positions. This was prior to the market's fall of the cliff. I've learned to listen to that little whisper.

I sold the last of my SEED in the a.m. Fidelity had NO shares short at the end of the day yesterday after having many earlier yesterday. YOu know what that means! Short sellers were feeding chum to the pirhana's in yesterday's feeding frenzy. I quickly calmed my earlier lament of selling too soon.

I bought some DUG in Etrade from my gold stock profits--seemed like OIH was going nuts. Here's my current E-trade--another milestone: >$21K by a hair! That will go away quickly if DUG reverses or WZEN plummets. I re-entered a WZEN position. That may have been ill advised! These are really the only stocks I own now except for my FAST NOV$45 puts

FAST: I sold the OCT puts that I bought yesterday for a 92% gain. I wanted to hold, but those puts can go against you quickly. Plus, they expire next week. I still have November puts.

FXI: I shorted this today profitably.

RIMM: I shorted this UNPROFITABLY. Today's stupid stock trick. It made a nicely positive day a negative day in one account. I'm like a squirrel--I have two non-taxable accounts and two taxable accounts. Rather than treat them as 2 pots of money, I treat them as 4. Yeah, it's probably nutty, but I did say it was squirrel like.

Here's a discipline that I need to learn: Learn to walk away!!!! Fear and greed affects me as well. Overall, I'm fine for the week but I was stupid and overreached.

Nona asks: "Leisa, when you make a killing on a trade, to you reserve some of your profits and keep them? (I'm thinking of that old nugget from "The Richest Man in Babylon" i.e., to pay yourself first.)"

Geez, it happens so often! (g). My real preference, and a strategy that I've had some success with is to take my gain and by options on the stock. Then I feel like I have (1) exposure to additional move and (2) a free ride. I've done this with FMD, HERO, MLHR and others. Perhaps it is a loopy strategy, but it fits with my loopy personality. But yes, I always pay myself first. I would not plow the original plus gains back into the stock. IF you've found an investing style that works for you, stick with it. There are many styles out there.

SEED, for example, because of it's bizarro rocketing all of a sudden became a large part of my portfolio. I already had a very heavy weighting (I've never done, and likely never will do the 5% here and there in stocks). I thought that I would hang onto those last 1K shares. But I was quite sure that the stock would go down (given the pirrhana feeding). So I punted. I would not re-enter SEED here. I'll keep it on a watch list. But it feels like it has shot its wad.