BRCD, AAPL play

On Nov 30th when BRCD announced their earnings, the shares went down due to lower than expected forecast, I sell my $7.45 position at $7.40. It's a small loss, then I bought another 200 shares back at $7.18.

Today, after the verdict is reached for former Brocade Com executive, the stock went down drastically. Although, this has nothing to do with BRCD shares but investors seems to react differently. Brocade has settled with SEC long time ago and paid a hefty amount of penalty, this guilty sentencing should not affect BRCD in any way but since it is in the news, it still bring the shares down. I doubled up my position at $6.95 for an additional 200 shares which gives me around $7.07 / share average.

I sould my AAPL stock at $188 / share. The Apple stock has ups and downs, therefore, I might buy again when it's under $180 /share.

I finally sold all my BRCD position at $7.21 each share. That gives me around 2% gain in about a week.

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Bought 200 shares of BRCD @ $7.45

Today, the stock take a dive and I bought it at $7.45 per share. Earning is in 3 days. I will either sell the shares before or after the earning depend on how to stock progress.

Sell 100 shares of CAG @ $24

After holding this stock for around 2 months and not improving, I finally sell it at $24. It represents loss of 5.75%

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Sold 80 shares of WDC at $28.40

After the good earning report of WDC and Fed announced a great job report, this stock rallied up and I finally sold it at $28.40 which represents 10.08% gain in a period of 2 days! This is one of my best investment so far. If I waited a bit longer I can sell above $29 but I'm trying not to be greedy since I already setup the limit order the day before I went to sleep at $28.40. I'm just happy with my 10% growth. Remember that bulls get money, bears get money but hogs are slaughtered!

Bought SINA and CHL

China market is hot now, therefore, today when the market is down I bought 45 shares of SINA @ $56 and 30 shares of CHL @ $100.89. I will hold it for at least a month since it will most likely go up!

Bought 80 shares of WDC @ 25.80

Western Digital (WDC) will have earning tomorrow and I'm sure that the sales is still strong for this storage system manufacturer. Hitachi report a great earning boosted by harddrive sales a while ago. I hope I can see a nice jump tomorrow :)

Sold 20 shares of AAPL @ $188

I sell my Apple stock today at $188 each share. It represents 8.25% gain in return in a period of 11 days. Not too shabby!

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Bought 100 shares of YHOO @ $31.95

I bought Yahoo! shares today, with Yahoo's stake at Alibaba IPO, I'm sure this stock will go up in near future. After the stock rallying up last week, it has pullback this morning so I quickly snap up 100 shares and plan to hold it until November 6.

Sold 50 shares of LFT @ 29.90

Well, when I look this morning, the stock price was going down and I'm afraid I will be in the same situation as my VM holding. So before I go out, I set a sell stop limit at $29.90. Unfortunately, the stock price went below that and then bounce back up. I have to eat loss of 3.81%. Greed is evil, I should have the limit sell at $33 before.

Bought 50 shares of LFT @ $30.80

Today is the IPO for Longtop Financial Technologies Limited (LFT). The stock was open around $27 but then hovering for few hours about $25. Afterward, it rallies up after 2 PM. I closely monitor the tick and finally jumped in at $30.80. It closes at $32.40 and after hour trade is over $34. I hope this stock can give me a substantial return to recover my loss with VM IPO trade.

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Bought 25 shares of BA at $95.60

I bought 25 shares of Boeing Company today, they will have earning report tomorrow and based on my research, they have sold a lot of commercial planes and should boost the earning. Let's just hope so!

SOLD 50 shares of VM @ 11.70

Well, I finally think I had enough, this stock is not going anywhere and the price keep dropping like crazy these past few days. I don't want to hold this stock any longer so I finally sell it and eat up loss of -25.48%. Luckily, I only bought 50 shares of this stock during the IPO since I'm still not sure how the hype and performance of this stock in the future. In the mean time, I will still hold my CAG shares and hoping there will be a good news anytime soon.

Bought 20 shares of AAPL at $173

After relieving my self selling SNDK yesterday since the stock price drop down to more than 10% today, I feel that I'm confident with Apple Inc., the iPhone sales has soar dramatically especially after they cut the price, Apple will definitely beat the estimated earning on monday. I have a lot of friends that buying multiple iPhones after the price drop, even though the early adaptor paid significantly more for their iPhones, but they are getting a gift certificate which valid toward future purchase of Apple products which will definitely increase the sales of Apple product once again. I'm sure the stock price will soar after the earning release on Monday :)

SOLD 45 shares of SNDK @ 50.01

I finally sold the SNDK shares just right before the earning release, it represents 5.28% return in period of 2 days. I'm just worried that the stock price will shoot down if the earning is lower than expected since there are so much hope on this company by investors. I read about news on how NAND chip is oversupplied and recently SMOD also report a lower than expectation earning due to the very same reason. I don't want to see the stock price goes down like eBay had today. So I take what I can get for now :)

Bought 50 shares of SNDK @ $47.20

Their earning will be announced in 2 days, the stocks price plunge today due to downgrade performed by analyst from buy to hold. I jump in at $47.20. Although, there are lower margin in NAND memory sales. However, I think SNDK is a solid company and one of the largest memory chip manufacturer.

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SOLD 50 shares of SWY @ 34.20

Today, I sell 50 shares of my SWY stock at $34.20 which gives me 2.71% after fee overall gain in a period of 2 days. After the retailer upgrade from "sector performer" to "sector outperformer" by analyst, the stock price pretty much racing up. It peaked at $34.50 but then it went back down again and finally I decided to sell it at $34.20 after following the tick and saw a quick jump in price for several minutes.

The only thing that concern me as a small player is the fee which totaled to $14 ($7 for each trade) and pretty much cut a lot of my profit. This is one of the reason I use Zecco in order to preserve the profit as much as I can. However, I have used all my balance in Zecco which pushed me to use Scottrade and pay for the trade fee. At least I still get a decent gain on this one so I'm happy with it.

VM IPO bought 50 shares @ $15.70

Today, I bought 50 shares of VM (Virgin Mobile) at $15.70. They have an IPO this morning, the stock price open up at $15, rising as high to $16.63 this morning but then go back down again. I jump in on $15.70. I think this is a great solid company, I seen them selling their phones and service at 7-Eleven, BestBuy, RadioShack and other electronic retailer stores. I missed the VMW IPO and I certainly don't want to miss this one although it's not hyped as much as the VMW's IPO which has P/E of 300 now. I will hold this stock for couple days and if it goes up by then, I will decide whether to take profit or play a bit longer on this one.

Try to recover CAG loss

I bought 50 shares of CAG at $26.28 on 9/18, 2 days before their earning release. So far, CAG always beat the estimated earning. So it does actually beat the earning on 9/20, however, on that day there is a bad news about job report so the stock is not going up at all. It does hit around $27 a share but I figured I should wait few more days before sell my shares and take profit. Unfortunately, the stock price keep going down day-by-day especially a little bad news about this company will bring the price goes down even deeper.

Then, I thought about my CC strategy by buying even more shares when the price is lower, so that's what I did, I bought 50 more shares at $24.65 on 10/8. The first two days, the price hit $25 but today there is bad news again due to Salmonella concerns. This volatility for this stock is just crazy, a little bad news will bring the stock price down while good news such as shares buy-back, good earning report, plant closure averted almost give no upward movement at all with the stock price. I will hold this stock for a few more weeks before decided to eat up the loss or keep holding it.

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Bought 50 shares of SWY @ $33.02

I bought 50 shares of SWY at $33.02 on 10/10. They will have earning announcement tomorrow. So far, they always meet the estimated earning by analysts and I think Safeway will do well this quarter especially when the overall economy is down and more people will buy food and cook at home. We will see how it goes tomorrow on the earning report, hopefully I'm right.

Update: 1/2 hour after I bought the shares, the price dropped to $32.92 and hit low at $32.89. I should try not to buy shares in hurry next time, should just watch the tick more carefully before it finally climbs up. For some reason, 2 PM seems the time when stock may reach it highest or lowest price of the day without any news. But most likely will go up toward the end of day as they anticipate for the earning report the next day.

RIMM, YUM, MOS

I know this may be just me ranting, but I pretty much regret my decision not to buy these stocks. These three stocks has close to 10% gain in less than a week after their earning report. Is not like I don't want to buy them but I have used up all the balance in my brokeage account and if I want to deposit more money using ACH, it will take around 3 business days before the fund is available in my account. Also, if I go to local Scottrade office, it will take one business day before the fund is available. I should found out about this sooner and act accordingly to put more money into my account so I could reap huge profit by these three stocks. O well, you always learn something new everyday.

Teach Me to Trade

When I browse to one of my brokerage account: Zecco.com, I saw an advertisement about a free Teach Me to Trade (TMTT) class. Since I'm pretty new about this whole trading thing. I signed up for the preview class after work. A day before the class started, a guy called me to confirm my attendance which I think it's pretty nice of them to remind me about it. So, I come to the class and it lasted about 2 hours. In my opinion, although they keep rambling on how you should set your financial goal, throwing sales pitch over and over again for the three days class for only $199. To be honest, at first I'm almost signed up for the three-day class since I learned some new things for trading such as: MACD, Stochastics and DMI chart during the 2 hours preview. Moreover, you can bring your spouse/friend with that $199 package which probably you could share it with your friend.

However, the only drawback I saw is that they will teach you to use their software and you need to pay $40 / month for the subscription. And then, to attend the three-day class, I need to take two days off from work on Thursday and Friday since the class run from Thursday to Saturday. I also did some research about TMTT course before I attend the seminar and I learned once you get in to their three-day class they will pitch you more to an "advanced" class that will cost you thousands to tens of thousand dollars. Because of those drawbacks, I decided not to sign-up for their three-day course. The only thing I wanted to learn more from the course might be options trading but again by reading reviews by some people that have attended the class, they said it only cover the very basic of options trading and push you to sign-up for the advanced options trading class which costs much more. In the mean time I think I would just use the information that I gather from the seminar and apply it to extend my trading knowledge.

WPCS gain

I bought 50 shares of WPCS at $10.50 on 9/14 which is just a day shy before the earning report. WPCS always meet the analyst estimate, therefore, I guess they might beat the estimate or at least meet it in this Q3 earning. In fact, I was right they meet the EPS of $0.16 which is just in line with analyst estimate. The shares rose to around $10.86 but I waited hoping that it would go up even more or at least go pass the $11.

After few days, the stocks plummet to below my cost price. Finally, when the share price started to crawl up again, I sell it at $10.72 on 10/1 which represents 2.1% gain in 2 weeks period. What hurts me the most is that in 2 days period (Oct. 3) they won a $10M contract for projects which make the stock price rose to over $11 and peaked at $11.20. Well, you cannot really know when good news are coming so I don't really regret it so much. As long as I still gain some profit, I'm happy with it.

GTW rumor

I read a rumor about how Acer might want to buy GTW (Gateway). I jump in and bought 300 shares when the stock is $1.81 on 8/28. The stock is gradually increase but pretty much stuck when it hits the $1.85 barrier. I was thinking since Acer offered $1.90 per share of GTW, before the deal is finalized, it might not hit anywhere near that price around the end of the year. I'm tired of holding it and I finally sell all 300 shares at $1.86 9/11 which represents 1.47% gain over the course of 2 weeks. Lesson learned here: jump in and follow the herds when you hear about good news such as company's buy-out, but don't forget to still do your own analysis of the company.

Stupid decision with CC but recover

One day I was browsing through calendar and I noticed that CC (Circuit City) will have earning annoucement in the following week. Although, they have a weak financial figure and many analysts estimate they will lose about 18 cents per share, I was thinking the stock price will go up if only they report a loss but lower than 18 cents. So I bought 70 shares at $10.15 on 9/6 and they were about in 52-weeks low price so I think it's impossible it will go lower. Well BIG MISTAKE!!! they reported 38 cents loss per share and the stock price plunge about 15% or $2 lower than the previous day's closing price. I read in the blog that many people get out and take profit before the earning announcement and short it all the way down. I feel so stupid that I keep my stock and thinking that it will beat the earning loss estimate. What I was thinking!? A lesson learned here is to never expect a miracle to come in a financially troubled company.

The stock price is going deeper everyday and I have the buyer remorse and wish that I could go back in time and sell the stock before the earning announcement. I keep thinking in my head whether I should sell the shares and eat up the loss or wait until it goes back up again. Few weeks passed by and the stock price doesn't seem to recover too well and keep making its 52-weeks low, I keep thinking myself that I have to overcome this common trader's mind. So, a day after the stock hits a new 52-weeks low at $7.70, I bought more CC stocks (130 shares) at $7.98 on 10/2. I see that since this stock is currently trading even lower than its company's value, a spark good news will drive the stock up quick.

I'm lucky I was right, the next two days, the stock gain more than 5%, I can sell at $8.75 and even up my overall position with CC but I think I will hold it for one more day, then the next day the stock has more than 5% again. I finally sell all 150 shares $9.05 at 10/5 and get an overall gain of 1.86% after commission. Although, the stock closed at $9.13 on that day but I don't regret my decision. If I didn't take the jump when the it was trading at $7-ish, I might have lost about 15% in these shares instead of gaining some.

Lesson learned: always be careful burning cash and forecasting loss since most of the time it would be worse than its estimated forecast.

Lesson learned 2: When selling shares, wait until mid-day to let other traders jumps in and hike the price, I sell my CC at $9.05 when it peaked at $9.41 around 2 PM. I should follow the tick more closely and sell when it started to drop or use trailing stop order.

Zecco = Zero Commission

After I used up all my free trades at Scottrade, I feel that $7 commission is overwhelming if you are a small trader like me. I finally open up a Zecco account which I kind of reluctant about it since they were new. In fact, although the sign up process asked you a lot of questions, I feel that it's justified as they give you 10 free trades / day or 40 trades / month. Although I need to print out the application form, sign, scan and send it again to them via email, my account was ready to use in about 2 business days. One thing I really like about them is they allow you transfer in-out from ACH linked to my checking account for free! Most brokerage will only allow you to transfer in, not both. I opened up a margin account with Zecco as I think I have learned enough about stock trading. I do feel that their trade execution is slower than Scottrade though. I still keep my Scottrade account open because they have a better research tool and I really like their live streaming quote.

Update: Beginning January 2008, any account opened after October 1 2007 no longer have free trades unless you have at least $2,500 in balance. It's $4.50 per trade if it's below $2,500 in balance and only 10 free trades per month now if you have greater than or equal to $2,500 in balance. As I trade in greater amount, I might switch to Scottrade again but in the mean time I will still stick with them.

IMAX is good

I read a lot of news and catch that IMAX is a good buy. So finally, I bought 150 shares of IMAX at $4.31 on 8/28 and sold at $4.78 on 9/6 representing a 9.82% profit in about a week. I'm glad I sold it during its peak since after that, a news about the company manipulating the book, the stock price goes down badly. One thing I learned from this trade is the IMAX stock price was hyped by a lot of financial blog telling the stock as a good buy, you just have to catch it sooner before the story spread even wider.

Trading time has begun

I've been wanting to increase my personal net worth but was not feel ready due to some other higher priorities I could use with my savings, this include sending some money back home to my mom, putting down payment for house, and pay tuition for my MBA degree in 2006 - 2007.

Finally, after everything is settled, I started to do some more research in a stock market. I ended up opening a brokerage account with Scottrade as my co-worker use them too. I also took advantage of their referral program which gives 3 free trades for the referrer and referee if you were referred by someone. I open a cash account since I wasn't ready to take the risk with margin account before study about it further.

My first trade was BRCD. I bought 100 shares at $6.92 on 8/23 as my co-worker told me they will have an earning announcement coming pretty soon and they always beat estimate and the stock price generally increase after the announcement. As a result, it did beat the estimate but my co-worker told me to hold the stock until the end of year. As time goes by, the stock is going down a lot due to mortgage crunch and I was pretty worried. When finally the stock is going up back to its pace, I sold it at $7.26 on 9/13 representing a modest 3.9% gain in 3 weeks. Not long after that, several good news came out and the stock is keep going up and hit the $8 barrier. However, I did not regret my decision since it was my very first trade and I don't have any experience at all.

A little story

Since I was small, I'm known in my family as a great money saver. I always good at managing my own money and keep track with all the expenses. I bought my first motorcycle with my own saving when I was 15 years old. I moved to U.S. when I was 17 and due to financial problem within my family, I have lived all by my own when I was 20 years old exactly in 2002. Although this is common for most American but it's uncommon for people from my own country to live by their own before they are done with school.

Since I was not a citizen, I'm not eligible for student loan. I started my own online business with my limited skill of HTML and running an online business. However, my business grow steadily and I was able to cover all my expenses which includes: rent, food, tuition, etc. Tuition is the hardest financial hit during that time since as a non-resident, you generally pay around 3 times more than the resident. Despite all that, I still manage to finish my education in community college and public university. As a reward to my self, I upgraded my car to a nice 1999 Acura 3.2 TL from 1996 Honda Accord in 2005 when I graduated from the university with a bachelor of science diploma in Computer Science. During that time, I also received one international immigrant scholarship which helped me a little bit with my tuition.

I bought my first house in 2006 when I was 23 years old during the booming market after start working in an IT company for 6 months. I've been wanting to get my own house since in 2005 when I just graduated from college, but due to lack of job history, I have to hold that thought for a year. Although now the housing market is not appreciating as rapidly as before, I still think my house still gaining a pretty good momentum in price.

I start my own personal finance blog

After reading several personal finance blogs, I decided to start one by my own. I think it would be better for me overall since I can keep this blog as a diary where I can always look back and look at a good decision I made or review for past mistakes in order to make a better decision.

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