Forum Archive Index - May 2004

["SJ.Greaves" <SJ.Greaves@xtra.co.nz>]

You should always have decided when you are going to get out of a stock before you buy it. But you should also have a plan to back that plan up.

 I had a good example of that this week. I'd brought a few TTR between $0.30 and 0.33. Started selling a few when I was down 10%, as per my plan. Then yesterday the stock dived down to the low twenties. There was only 6 buyers for the stock when I checked. I would then have had to sell down to $0.10 to sell my entire holding in the stock.

 This was an unrealistic option. I was confident the stock would be back nearer $0.30 soon so I brought back all the stocks I sold and a few more.

 Whatever you decide to do you need to be able to make realistic decisions under the circumstances, when the market or a stock is going against you. If you struggle with this and are loosing money, maybe it would be better to look at managed funds. Some of them have had some good result of late.

 Another good idea is to paper trade for a while until you get confident. It's a lot easier to make realistic decisions when your hard earned capital isn't disappearing at an alarming rate. I paper traded for 2 year before buying my first stock.

 

Cheers.

 

P.S. TTR is a mining stock, mainly Nickle. For my 5 cents worth I think the price of Nickle and TTR will hit a new high before Christmas.