I saw the announcement last night, and automatically decided to stay away from MDX, but that's not what happened. I looked at the gainers list and MDX was 3.6c and +1100% up. So I pulled up a chart and started watching. With very few sellers, I find it hard to pick an exit point. The price just jumped all over the place, but I decided to buy at 5.1c and then decided on 6.2c as my exit. Generally my trading is for 5-10 pips, but 11pips gave me a $1000 profit in 15mins. My expectation was that the holders of MDX would want out in a hurry. But that didn't happen.
My 2nd buy was only partially filled at 8.6c and I quickly put in a sell at 10.5c (normally I would wait till the full parcel is bought, or i might change the buy price), but wanted to lock in profit. This was done in 10mins. Profit of almost $600.
My 3rd trade is where things went wrong. I bought at 19.5c and set my sell price above my trading rule of 5-10pips. So I had every opportunity to sell for a profit and I didn't. Even when the price was dropping I just watched. Its not my normal practice to sell as soon as things go south. I allow time for a bit of a recovery. Instead I found that I was modifying my sell price multiple times. I sold for 13.5c for a loss. Overall I ended up with a $170 profit.
I only have myself to blame for not sticking to my trading plan. But I did sell whilst still having an overall profit. (previously I would allow the stock price to fall lower).
For me... definitely some lessons to learn. I should've had more confidence in my 1st purchase, and tell myself I'm prepared to lose the $5100 that I spent. If I'd held my nerve, it would've been $18k profit. But I doubt I would've sold at the top price. I would've sold at $10k profit. 2nd purchase I could've modified the rest of my buy order. 3rd purchase probably shouldn't have been done, but I also should learn to stick to my plan.
MDX took up all my attention, inbetween taking calls. Way harder to trade than other stocks. Later in the day I saw that CAP was having a good run, and I had a buy order towards the end but decided to cancel during the auction. I prefer to have capital for Mondays news, rather than jump into something without having watched exactly what happened during the day.
Need to remind myself to stick to my trading plan.
Hope everyone has a great weekend. Hopefully Monday offers great trading opportunities.
