One Dumb Error - 4/10/2007

I was very excited about today. The bad mouth on TV had giving out 5 stock picks. All of them were 4 letter names (Nasdaq - easier to trade) and all of them reacted with good gains in the aftermarket. The names were ROSE, INCY, VCLK, AQNT and DIVX. ROSE and INCY had big percent gains while DIVX had a big point gain. I could not wait. I had all my orders setup between my two brokerage accouts and was waiting to strike. Damn right off the bat - no shares in DIVX to short. Bingo again - AQNT, VCLK and ROSE all looked like it was going to be too hard to short in the premarket.

So lets pick on INCY. I got a 2k short done at 7.72, waited and added another 2k short at 7.71. Thought to myself maybe another but decided not to. Time to put in stop loss order. Lets see - buy to cover 2000 at 7.85 good for the premarket/day and buy to cover 2000 at .792 good for the day. Crap the second one should have been for premarket/day not just day. Shit what just happened. 2000 shares just got cover - oh F - I did not make it a stop - just a limit order above the market. While I was being stupid, INCY fell to 7.65 where I covered the other half being so pissed off a myself. The I watched in great frustration as INCY drops another 25 cents before the open. The trade nets me $60 when it should have made me $1200. Thank god I cleared me head quickly and I was able to make a couple of bucks off shorting the open on the stock. I made a few other trades during the but the only one of note was being short Rose. I made a small gain on it when if I had the guts, I could have made it a very good trade.

Going back to INCY - it is a favorite type of stock to trade when the big mouth puts in play. You know there will be a lot of shares flying around and the spreads should be tight. With it being a low price stock, you can sometimes short it on the 8:00 am pop, cover it at 8:30-9:00, then buy it at 9:25 if the MM's play nice, selling it into the opening surge and then selling it short 5 to 10 minutes after the open.

Again these are the days that I think frustrate me the most as a trader. When you have a good trade or trade idea and you screw it up by mistyping. Today was also a milestone for me - I had never traded over 15000 shares before. At least my broker is happy.