Heck of a start to my week. AMD took off for the moon this morning and my call was following suit. It opened up 0.88% and I thought, "Ok great. If it stays around this level then that's a solid day. I'll take it." I got busy with work for a few minutes and didn't check again until 9:47am. Up 2.47% after 17 minute and my own position was about about 12%. I was feeling it! Getting excited after seeing the chart going almost vertical was like seeing a unicorn. I was really excited for where it was going. The price was approaching the resistance line and I knew my time was limited. An hour later, the stock was up to $13.72 and it wasn't done. Around 11:00am the price of one share of AMD hit and broke $13.80 and for me that was it. My position alone was up 20% on the DAY and I ended up making the sale and pocketing a near 30% after commission and fees. One hundred and ten dollars, usd.
Actually writing that out makes it seem pretty sad that I am so pumped for that. There are people that you read about making thousands and thousands of dollars on one trade. For me personally, this is what it's all about. I know I'm not going to me making thousands of dollars on my trades. Realistically - with the money I am putting down - I am elated when I'm able to get just one hundred. My hope is that the more I do this, the more I am able to learn about investing, the better I will get at writing (because I'm sure I'm fairly boring), and the more I will be able to make. Hopefully this will document the growth of my portfolio instead of the demise.
Other notable portfolio movements. My INFY contract didn't move at all. It opened up $10.00 but fell to no gain by market close. My position in MACK - Merrimack Pharmaceutical - fell 7.09% taking exactly ten dollars from my investment. Besides that it was a day of little to no movement.
I forgot to mention that I recently acquired shares of SKT and UBNK. I liked where each of them stood financially, technically, and they give a good, consistent dividend. Neither of them moved too much since the buy or today. That concludes my Monday update.
Tuesday the 10th
Today was a day of little movement. I was relieved at the beginning of the day to see my position in Infosys way up on early movement. $20 dollars right at market open was too good to be true. Turns out it was. It ended the day back at zero movement. I am officially mad at myself for buying into that contract. I wanted to see what the spread was if I were to sell it. I went through the process of making the sale, previewed my order and guess what? Thought the price per contract has gone up in my account, it will still sell for $0.40. The spread is too much to recover on such a low volume option. It doesn't expire until April 20th of 2018. So....we'll see where that goes.
In other news, Chipotle (CMG) was up 2.29% so my one share went up $6.96. Big money!! Kroger (KR) was up 98 cents which makes my total position only down 45%. That's a big ole whoopsie for me. TripAdvisor (TRIP) fell by 2.50% which continued to bone me. Just a quick snapshot of the few blunders I have made in my portfolio.
In total, my portfolio fell by $5.04 which was an irrelevant day, all told. I am in the beginning stages of researching my next investment and I will keep you all updated on my future endeavors.
Wednesday the 11th
The big news today was that I found my next investment and pulled the trigger. This stock has just recently fell from $81 to $74 in a two day period. That whole move started in the latter half of Friday and mostly into Monday. Tuesday and today were days of very little movement - Tuesday was up a bit and today down by about just as much. The bears and the bulls are battling for control after a massive correction in the price which gives me opportunity to jump in. If you're keeping score at home and guessed CVS, drinks on me!
I purchased one call contract with a strike at $75.00 that expires on February 16th, 2018. The final cost basis came out to $357.70. The bid/ask spread was not nearly as repulsive as INFY - I checked, double checked, and then triple checked to make sure. Below are screenshots of the daily chart followed by the weekly. What really peaked my fancy was the strong horizontal support at about 74 dollars. The current price is actually below the support, believe me, that is not beyond me, but if you pull back and take a look at the monthly, you can see the even firmer support about a dollar below at 73 dollars. Levels it has not reached since December of 2016. Primary reason for investing - technical.
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| Daily |
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| Weekly |
In other portfolio news, MACK was up a whopping 8.23% and KR was right behind(ish), up 1.22%. I got a notification that it was up over 5% in pre market trading and thought it would have closed higher. I haven't checked until just now.
DIS fell a percent which hurts my portfolio quite a bit. It is my largest holding and can dictate a good or a bad day. CMG was up a tad and TRIP fell 1.61%. In my other brokerage account which houses SKT and UBNK I had a good day. Tanger Outlets closed with no change and United Financial Bancorp increased by 1.08%
Overall, my original and most used account fell by a grand total of 1.46%. Due in large part to the purchase of my CVS contract near the beginning of the day before it fell another half percent. Stay tuned until tomorrow! (Today since that's when I'll post this).
Thursday the 12th
A tumultuous start to this Thursday as most of the market opened up in the red and sent my investments falling. The mornings are always busier at work than the afternoons so I have less time to check at market open. I was granted the opportunity to check the my investment 20 minutes after the open to the lovely view of an ever falling CVS, among almost everything else. After looking further, I noticed that when looking all the way back to November using daily bars, the low point was actually midway into the 71 dollar mark. So theoretically the stock could pull back even further. Well duh, that's always a possibility. Just saying I won't be surprised if it did.
I may have jumped-the-gun on the purchase, could have done some more research or waited until the ever volatile morning had subsided, but I own what I own and I stand by my decision. It was all over the board today. As I mentioned above the stock opened negative and fell quick, took a sharp turn to above $74, fell again, then climbed all the way to a peak of $74.56 until slowly falling and trading sideways for the rest of the day until the close down 0.16%. My contract value fell by 10.56% leaving me down a total of 11.24% after day two of trading. Not worried.
In other news...remember how yesterday I said Disney was my largest holding in my portfolio and can dictate whether I gain or lose? LOL. The stock fell 1.64% and certainly dragged my portfolio down with it. My other portfolio killer (today at least) is Cara Therapeutics. CARA. If you followed me in the past then you know I am a big proponent of the company and the drugs they are developing. Owning CARA has probably been my biggest learning moment to date.
I started following it in mid December of 2016. Back then, it was priced at $9.30, roughly. I had it on my radar for the whole year and never pulled the trigger. I continued to talk myself out of it, convincing myself I didn't know what I was really talking about. And it started to climb and climb and climb and climb some more. Instead of writing it out I will just show you..
Then, starting on June 20th, the price began to climb. And very fast. At the close of market on June 27th, the price of CARA was $26.95 - the peak. My average share cost was $18.43, meaning at that point I had gained about 46$. My $737.31 investment had turned into $1,076.47. But I was greedy and confident it would keep going. This was going to be the one that I rode out for a 100% gain. The next day it fell a little bit, only to $25.51, but still a considerable amount considering the volatility. I still remember where I was and what I was doing and what time it was. June 28th at 4:06pm and an article comes out on stating that there was news the oral version of the IV drug that just got a boost from the FDA wasn't going to be statistically significant. There were murmurs about it - I thought. I decided right then and there that tomorrow I was going to sell, take my 30%, and walk away a happy man. Turns out the article wasn't based on rumors or hypothetical information. Data had just been released and I didn't realize that until the next morning. Waking up and seeing the pre-market price down 30% made my stomach do flips.
On June 29th, CARA opened at $18.50 and in the blink of an eye I lost everything I had gained.
That's where the story should end. Sadly, it does not. Silly old me was [is] still confident that Cara can do something. That their non opioid pain treatment can be a real help to the epidemic in the United States. What did I do? I bought more.
On the 30th it opened around $18.50 and closed at $15.50. I obviously bought at the high end of that spectrum. The weekend came and went and I was kicking myself the whole time. Just asking myself why, over, and over, and over, and over again. July 3rd was a positive day of little movement since the market closed at 1pm. I was at my girlfriends parents house and was away from my computer and phone, luckily. However, on June 5th THIS guy did it again. I was trying to get my cost basis down since I was still confident. The stock price opened at about $16.50 and eventually rose to just over $17.20 before closing the day at $15.25, ish. Where did I buy, you ask? Great question.
If that's not a portfolio killer, I don't know what it. Today, CARA fell by another 2.83% to a price of $13.06. Ugh. What did I learn? Stick to the rules you create for yourself and read the news on the things you own. I got caught up in the increase and lost sight of my ultimate goal. Now I am in this position and don't really know where to go from here.
In summary, I didn't sell when I should have. Bought more share. Then bought more shares again. Now I'm down a lot.
My portfolio fell by a total of 2.27% today. Not a fun day. OH! Almost forgot. Bitcoin hit record highs this evening and I did sell out of my position at a 20% profit. It was only an investment of $221, but 40 dollars is 40 dollars. It could have been worse.
Friday the 13th
Today is Sunday. Not Friday. Friday the13th lived up to the story of Friday the 13th. It was bad. It was scary. It was.....just overall not a great day. First of all, work started to get super busy. I'm talking zero downtime busy. Now, don't get me wrong here. I am fully aware that I have a much better job than a lot of people and I am in no way complaining about it. It's pretty easy, comparatively, and I enjoy it for the most part. I just usually have a couple minutes here and there to do some independent research and check my investments. Not the case on Friday. So that was strike one. Strike two and three were CVS and CARA. Just one day after I outlined one of my worst string of investment decision and investment overall, the thing fell like, 4%!
And I know I said I wouldn't be surprised if CVS fell a little bit more. Closer to the $71 level. But I never said I would be okay with it. It fell again, and if my memory serves me right it was around a drop of 1.30%. Meaning my total investment in the call contract fell by....a lot? Yeah, a lot. In total, my call contract of CVS is now down 24.80%. Oops.
Since I went ahead and outlined my total bomb of Cara on Thursday, I am very unhappy to inform you that in total, that particular buy is now down 30.47%.
Actually, Cryptocurrency has been going off this last week and I have roughly $600 invested in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. I just sold Bitcoin for about a 20% profit and the other two holdings are nearing those levels as well. So it isn't THAT bad. I have other investment vehicles.
Talk with you tomorrow in the next post. If you are interested in seeing where my portfolio goes, give me some feedback, share with your friends and peers, let me know what else you want to see. I know I am not that great of investor. I have made very bad decisions that I am not trying to rectify. If you are curious and want to see and hear about all of my investments, good and bad, (mostly bad) then let me know. I will appease you. This is definitely something I want to continue so please, please let me know how I can make this better or more informative/exciting.
Thank you.
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