Bear Stearns bump & the exhiliration of day trading: Buy at open, sell at resistance, make 27.7% profit!

Action	Qty	Symbol	Price	Total			Trade Date	Time Completed
SELL	74	BSC	$12.64	$935.34			3/24/2008	10:24:52 AM
SELL	130	BSC	$12.6674	$1,639.74			3/24/2008	10:24:52 AM
BUY	204	BSC	$9.85	$2,016.40			3/24/2008	9:57:54 AM

To summarize, in for $2,016.40, out at $2,575.38 for a shared profit of $558.98 or $279.49 (27.7%) for my brother and I, each. Woot.

I couldn't get in to pre-market trading levels; by the time I woke up at 6:20a (9:20 EST), it was trading at ~$9.91. (And my money transfer hadn't completed yet.) Was forced to enter in at $10.70 because that's where the ask was, so I placed my order for 204 shares at market. Trading was halted on BSC for the first 27 minutes, which completely freaked me out, since I placed my market order at exactly 9:30:00 and just saw it hang.

I know I said I wouldn't buy above $8.50, but I knew there would be covering shorts and other excitement. I didn't expect the halt and that scared me a bit, but then they lifted it and my trade went through at $9.85. I watched it start to bounce and news came through that the deal with JPM seemed solid at $10/share. Good, I made at least 15 cents a share in almost any event. At the very least, we weren't going to see another offer come through at less than that value, or at less than my $9.85.

Then something interesting started happening: the stock upticked like crazy. I'm guessing a combination of covering shorts, an even slightly (or immensely) bigger deal coming or some insanity pushed the stock all the way up to the $13 range. I saw it start to dip and bounce off of a resistance point of about $13, so I exited the position at market, which was fulfilled in two blocks: 74 @ 12.64 and 130 @ 12.667. (It *briefly* spiked to $13.85, which means that if you had gotten in at pre-market around $6.40... well, damn.)

All in all a good showing of $279.49 on $1,008.20 invested, *after* commissions.

I'm going to pull my $1,000 back out since it was from my savings and not part of my active trading cash. I'll ask my brother what he wants to do with his. Good times. I can see how this is addictive. Now, if an offer comes through for $25/share or some such, it'd have been crazy to still be in so I won't feel bad. There are far too many "what ifs" in this game to beat yourself up over it for more than just a few minutes. It's trading around $12.05 now (8:14/11:14a) but I'm happy where I exited.