Thursday, April 24, 2008

Long TSRA, Short MOS, missed on AAPL

So I bought 20 AAPL at $162.60 right before close yesterday. And then I watched it spike amazingly to the $171 point in after-hours. And I didn't hit sell. As I was walking around the office a few minutes later, and then back to my desk, I was wondering why I hadn't at that point. By the time I had come back, it had gone from a ~$160 profit to ($133). Awesome. Ended up leveling out, but I don't want to hold it long.

I've loaded up an interesting play in Mosaic Company (MOS). They had a rough day yesterday and a quick look at their 6-month charts shows that every time they've had a pretty rough day, they've continued to slide the next day, sometimes to much greater effect. But they've always bounced up enough to trigger an upper-limit buy-to-cover, so I've pushed it up a bit high.

My order looks like this:
Sell -20 MOS @ 131.50 LMT
Buy +20 MOS STP 136.00
OR
Buy +20 MOS TRSTP MARK+.10 WHEN MOS MARK AT OR BELOW 129.00

Basically, I want to sell short almost immediately when the market opens. If the stock turns around and spikes up to $136, I'll buy to cover my position, total loss: $100.

If the stock flies through the $129 mark, a trailing stop will take effect such that if it rebounds by more than 10 cents at any point, a buy to cover will take effect and lock in some profit. If that hits, minimum locked in profit: $49 or so.

Might turn out that I'm fucking up how I place limit orders with shorting, but I'm learning the platform and figure my stops are in place to protect me from my own stupidity.

This will be my third roundtrip if it executes, so it's a good thing I'm leaving. I need to liquidate my Scottrade positions or convert them into something more stable. Maybe try the DJIA; see if we can see some gains in 19 days. We're past the nasty bank stuff and the rough earnings period, so we might see some bounceback and growth. Berkshire is also trading at a near-6-month low, but I won't be here to lock in the profits on that and Scottrade doesn't have logical/bracketed trades.

We'll see if I keep losing with my position ideas. I need to get the hell out of AAPL as well. I'm going to put a stop on that to make sure it doesn't tank.
Edit: AAPL exit positions:
SELL -20 AAPL STP 156.00
SELL -20 AAPL TRSTP MARK-.26 WHEN AAPL MARK AT OR ABOVE 164

No comments: