Friday's Trades:
Buys: GERN, ALXN, RWC.
Sells:
MA - stop hit for -2.99% loss.
BVX - stop hit for +0.77% gain.
TRT - stop hit for -0.33% loss.
EGY - stop hit for -5.02% loss.
OK, this continual stop hitting is really getting annoying. The proper placement of stops is to me the hardest part of trading. I am clearly picking good stocks and pretty decent entry points, but I'm getting killed on some of these stops. I've been setting my stops in close because I've been nervous about this market, but clearly that's been a stupid thing to do. I'm not giving them enough room to run.
MA on Friday, for example, was a complete screw up in stop placement. Price opened and dropped and made a beeline to my stop, hit it, and then the stock went straight up and turned in a nice day. My stop simply should not have been that close. I'm not sure what I was thinking.
BVX was a somewhat different case. I placed my stop just above my entry price because BVX went up more than 10%. Any time a stock goes up more than 10% from my buy price, I place my stop just above my buy price to protect me from losing money. TRT did the same thing. I don't want to change that rule because it usually protects me, it's just annoying that it keeps happening. I need to get some gains out of those winners.
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