day trade madness

2007-02-06T01:45:00.000-08:00

the madness continues: after making money on FER, though not as much as I could (and now being nervous about buying back into it), I was considering selling out of LAF, a mining co. that was hit by a typhoon a week after I bought in. luckily I didn't, as today they had some news about some resumption of operations - as yet unconfirmed - and on Thursday will likely get the go-ahead from the relevant government. the shares have now risen to my target price (a $500 profit instead of the $800 loss I was looking at), and I think I will wait and see what happens Thursday, as I'll be at my desk and able, I hope, to pounce at the optimum time. of course the news could be bad, but I think I'll take the risk on that. have no cash free right now as it's all tied up and waiting waiting. which means I risk having to sell out to fund ongoing other projects, which I don't like. so I hope the news is good Thursday and I can make $1000 and get my "stake" back as well.

2007-01-17T18:39:00.000-08:00

i am trying to finish some very tedious paid work, which has fully occupied me for a month's worth of free time and will pay maybe $1600. but meanwhile Fermiscan, which I bought at 70, sold at 99, then bought again at 1.17 and watched dive to 88, has zipped up 27 per cent today. just today. I sold 5000 at 1.25, and now am not sure what to do with the rest; probably sell another 4000 and keep 2000. meaning I'll have earned two-thirds of what this boring paid work will bring me in a single day.

then again, you don't get days like this very often. never. and this is a weird and volatile stock with a really stupid p/e ratio and no actual product as yet. still, at least it's ethically good: beating breast cancer is a nice idea (well, early detection: same thing, really).

2006-12-10T18:28:00.000-08:00

7/12: bought 10,000 FER at .70 for $7000
12/12 sold 9,000 FER at .99

profit - about $2800 plus retention of 1000 shares.

now THAT'S more like it. even the fact that it's currently trading at 1.04 can't dampen my pleasure. and even though this probably only brings me marginally above break even when interest etc is considered, I still feel quite rich. even better, FER does a Good Thing - it has a seemingly reliable non-invasive test for early breast cancer. a bit wistful in that I wonder if I kept the whole 10,000 I might not clean up even more. but a policy's a policy and a 40% gain in five days screams SELL.

several other shares - BTA, REA, and the dreaded silver miner struck by the typhoon - continue to limp along at 10% below purchase. ah well. they'll get there.

2006-12-04T15:31:00.000-08:00

someone told me: buy silver. so I did: MMN and LAF, in equal parts. MMN is now up 25%. LAF's mine suffered a typhoon and is down the same.

not sure if I should, but I'm going to take the profit on MMN, keeping $500 of shares, and I guess LAF will recover eventually.

biota is gradually crawling back up. I think that, dotcom booms aside, the real time you lose in this game is when you are forced to sell low.

2006-07-02T21:04:00.000-07:00

ah right. so remember on Friday I bought $10,000 worth of BTA, in the hope it would show a small rise, and had to sell them at the end of the day for a total loss, including costs, of about $500, because I don't have $10,000 to cover the settlement?

well of course TODAY they announced a new sale to the US government and it peaked at about 20 per cent up on what I paid on Friday. in other words, instead of making $2000, I lost $500.

here's a stick. hit me, will you?

resolution: never, ever, ever to put myself in a position where I risk being forced to sell. of course that means slower profits. but it also means no forced losses.

I haven't totalled up last financial year, from January to June, yet. but I suspect I'll come up about $300 in profit. is this just a learning experience? for you, maybe. for me it's real money.

2006-06-29T18:16:00.000-07:00

time does strange things when you're waiting for a price to move. bta put out a soothing "letter to shareholders" at 9.30 this morning, so I bought some shares at 10.05 when the market opened; I'm going to have to resell them today, profit or loss, and at 11.15 am I'm already feeling pessimistic, though the market day isn't even a third through.

2006-05-23T22:13:00.000-07:00

I've been scaling things back, partly because the market was making me edgy, partly because I've bought too much art and needed my cash back. I sold out of ASX in two tranches at a loss of $450 all up; yes, the ASX shares I declined to sell at a profit of $600 a month or two back. (though I did buy some of the ones I've sold at far less a while back, so the loss is mitigated.) I sold out of PSV at a profit and bought back in at 20 pc less, with a lesser value overall. I sold out of REA, again at a profit, and I'm waiting for it to drop so I can rebuy a smaller parcel.

but I held and held to Biota. yesterday it dropped to $1.25. I paid an average of $1.75 for those shares. in my opinion, Biota is a special case: it's way volatile and the slightest sniff (hah!) of bird flu pushes it up. as I write, it's rising, for no apparent reason, at about 1c every couple of minutes. of course this doesn't mean I'm making money. but it does mean my losses are shrinking. it's the kind of stock people think may "go off" one day, and therefore when it starts to move, I think they jump in fast.

all I want is $1.82 and my money back. really.

2006-05-11T22:42:00.000-07:00

just seconds after I wrote that post, the full WTE sale went through; a mere $450 profit, and I hate to think that maybe it will jump again next week. but I'm out and have some money coming back into my account; I'd reached the stage where there was NO ready cash, and a credit card bill awaiting payment. too overstretched.

2006-05-11T22:35:00.000-07:00

WTE finally came from being well below my purchase price of .039 to just above it; I had a feeling .043 was the place to be, but left it at .044, and sure enough it peaked at one sale of .044 - not my parcel of .044 either. now I'm halfway through selling out at .042, a mere $400 profit on a couple of months of having $6000 tied up. but all the same, at least I'm unloading it; BTA continues to slide.

I noticed that PSV has gone up 50 per cent since I bought a small "keep" parcel in January. apart from annoying me that I didn't keep the two tranches I bought and sold for mere hundreds of dollars, this spooked me so much I sold out altogether; I'll buy back in if and when it goes down, and just $1000 worth. a $500 profit is a $500 profit, however it comes. and because REA put out a complex share splitting deal that drove up the price 15 per cent - but, I suspect, only until the deadline for the deal passes - I also sold out of that. my original $500 from five years ago is now worth $2000, but there are a couple of safe little property/share fund things launching soon that I think I should put the profits from those two into. in fact, as I write, that's a good new principle: recycle significant profits from the "hold" portfolio back into itself, as opposed to the daytrademadness money.

the play money is reducing anyway. I've bought a bit of art, and until BTA recover, there won't be much floating about. as well, I'm getting nervous about how hot the market is. and my country castle needs a new roof.

2006-05-02T21:43:00.000-07:00

forgot to say: the reason I didn't get that peak is I was out and unable to watch the market; but as soon as I saw it had gone through I knew, without reading the news, that interest rates didn't go up today and that this silly market will go on a bit longer; hopefully long enough that I'll get my funds back and hopefully make a little money in the meantime.

2006-05-02T21:25:00.000-07:00

good: OLY went up, up, up today and my resolve in holding to my sale price was rewarded, three months later, with $750. I am going to try not to buy more with the $7000 I'm getting back, as I'm way up on what I should have in the market.

bad: of course it peaked at a point where I could have made 1200 or so. but the new rules say: be happy to sell at anything over 5% (about 250-300 profit on most trades) and if it hits 10%, barring exceptional circumstances like bird flu, DO sell and be very happy, regardless of whatever other nonsense goes through your mind.

at least it goes some way to paying back the KYC debacle.

2006-04-30T19:10:00.000-07:00

and of course five days later the dead cat bounce came; I wouldn't have made any profit, but I could have at least not lost as much.

technically I'm still ahead, but I've discovered that my nature is to worry about losses and not fully appreciate wins. making me temperamentally unsuited to this game.

nevertheless, I'm still in, at least until the other shares I have make it back up. OLY in particular is making a good effort to get to the stupid peak price I paid for it "on market". if I'd got it at a more reasonable price by not going on market, I'd have made a bit of money now. at least I didn't jump when it was $1350 down.

2006-04-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

a good week followed by a shocking three weeks; including the fact that the shares I sold in my good week have continued to rise while the ones I bought to replace them have, well, dived, as have the bta and asx ones I didn't sell when I could have.

did I mention my husband doesn't know I'm doing this? and that he's home ill today and lying happily on the carpet reading a newspaper while I wipe $1100 off my net worth? I had to do it: I bought KYC shares on the basis of what looked like a dip. it was to dip what an iceberg is to an icecube. at my predetermined "fuck, this is going down" point, ie around $1, I got out. it hurt. my total profits are now only $2000. and my other shares are still down, some more than KYC. but their fundamentals and/or potential to rebound are much better. enough pain for one day.

2006-03-29T18:53:00.000-08:00

see, now this is a bit more like what I had in mind. Monday, bought Adacel at .44. Thursday, sold at .49: profit, $620, or 10 per cent in three days. March 15, bought BGF at .395, March 30, sold at .445: profit, $610 in two weeks.

and Biota has finally gone past my January stupid purchase price of $1.82 (after diving to around $1.40, when only the chart showing support at that level saved me from bailing out.) They announced today that they'd got US government approval to compete on the flu market for prevention - only the second compound to do so - and shares duly went up to $2. I could try to jump now and make $800 or so; but as I've said before, I waited so long, I'm inclined to keep an eye on it and see what it does, at least until tomorrow when people have had a chance to read the news in the business section.

something is going on with Adacel, I'm sure. no announcements, just a jump in the price. I have a small parcel on my "hold" list, but with no certainty and a volatile stock, I decided to get out - don't forget that all this money comes off my mortgage at 7 % p.a.

now hoping the ASX shares will move again - I stupidly took them off the market to see where it went, but they simply peaked just above my sale price and then dropped again. this time I'm leaving them there; a $400 profit on $7000 investment will do fine if it comes within six weeks of the purchase.

still not sure what to do about OLY. if BTA goes high enough, I might be able to afford to take the thousand-dollar lesson it represents about not buying "at market". ever.

apart from dumb luck and favourable gold prices/currency movements, I'm learning: the closer I watch the market the better I do and: sticking to a few stocks and learning what's cheap for that stock is a good strategy. as for my sell points, they need work.

2006-03-28T14:27:00.000-08:00

very interesting: half an hour to the opening of the market, and the gold and asx shares are being requested at prices above what they're being offered for.

in other words, people have put their shares on the market at "x", the gold price has gone up, other people have determined to get the shares at x+10%, and the sellers have obviously not checked - or they're willing to stay low to get out of the market, I suppose.

I've adjusted my prices accordingly; I may not get the full morning spike that seems to occur, but I can't be at my computer in the first hour of trading and I am up to the hilt; it's time to take the thousand dollars or so that these rises represent and cool off for a minute.

bta has also made a pre-opening announcement that has created a similar situation; people looking to buy at $1.86, but others to sell at $1.78. that stock is so volatile that even though I could set a sale offer to get rid of the shares I bought at $1.82 three months ago, I'm hanging on just to see - and to see if I can get a really decent return for my trouble...

2006-03-19T19:06:00.000-08:00

this is more like it: I've been watching the REA shares go up since I bought them last Wednesday for $3.65. I just sold them at $3.95, which on 2000 shares is a $600 profit. they may go up a bit more: I don't mind, it's enough for the moment, as I still have too much tied up in stupid OLY shares.

the ASX index is heading for 5000 points, which will be interesting; I'm hoping my ASX (company) shares sell before then. I'll then only put back in one of those two deals; if I have to wait forever for OLY and BTA to sell, I should still really only have two other parcels in the market, and until I sold the REA shares, I had five.

or of course I could dispose of my BGF shares, which are up, but not up enough. it's nice to know I can; I suspect they could go up quite a bit more, but I have to be careful and keep checking, and it's all rather distracting and time consuming. not that I'd mind if every deal could be like the REA one...

2006-03-15T16:07:00.000-08:00

at last, some movement on the OLY front. they announced a new exploration licence and a sales deal to China that they modestly described as a "company-maker" and the shares shifted ten per cent. Still below what I stupidly paid for them, but not as much below.

also, the All Ordinaries jumped to 4950, very close to the magic 5000; if it gets there, my ASX shares might go. or people might be spooked.

monitoring the situation closely...

2006-03-14T19:03:00.000-08:00

new purchases: BGF (yes, again) at $.395; approximately $5000 worth.

REA,which jumped a bit today, at $3.65. have no idea as yet at what point I'll sell either. soon, though; I don't have the money to fund these purchases, really. heh.

2006-03-13T19:23:00.000-08:00

ho-hum. finally got rid of my VBA shares at 4 c more than I paid for them (a grand profit of about $80 after costs), only to watch them go up another 4 c within hours. keep in mind it took more than six weeks to make that first 4 c gain.

I surmise that this is a result of the failure of OzJet, and possibly Qantas's staffing woes. This kind of volatility is the reason I've taken my too-many BTA shares off the market; I could turn around in a day and find they've doubled in value and I've missed out. REA, which I hold about $2000 worth of (which I bought for $500 several years ago) did a big jump just after their halfyearly report came out - might look at them next.

but in the meantime, I am still stuck with: the BTA shares. OLY shares at 80 per cent of what I paid for them. and some ASX shares which will, I suppose, sell sooner or later. too much money in the market to get back in, and too much else to do.

2006-03-02T17:05:00.000-08:00

now the computers are laughing at me. I tried to resubmit my sell order for the stupid OLY shares I bought too high, and the system basically wouldn't put it through until I confirmed the sell price. ie, it said "how much? you're joking. you won't get that."

I put it in anyway. it's going to be a long wait.

meanwhile, REA, which I bought $500 worth of at a dollar a few years back, has spiked insanely, and my $500 worth is nearly up to two thousand. should have bought more of those. ain't hindsight a wonderful thing? (remembering that at the same time, I bought a lot of other dotcom dogs that won't be mentioned here for fear of me breaking down and sobbing.)

2006-03-01T20:31:00.000-08:00

wow. when it goes off, it goes off.

yesterday, acting on a combination of a hunch and annoyance at how long I'd waited for it to recover, I took my BTA shares off the market. today - 20 minutes ago - they announced a sale of a further 1.75 million doses of their product to the US government. the shares finally went above what I paid for them, and were going up by a cent every few minutes for a few minutes there.

now I have my 5500 shares and a dilemma; do I put them back on and take my modest profit, or given how long I've held on to them - nearly bailed out at $1.40 - do I hold them until the morning, in the hope that the overnight news (plus various bird flu outbreaks, little as I want to profit from that) will trigger more buy orders?

as I can be at my pc all morning tomorrow, I'm inclined to wait. if it gets above my purchase price solidly, at least I can get my money back - I was truly worried for a while - and there's a good chance with such a volatile stock that it will bounce much higher. exciting, scary stuff. (should be off at something else, but I'm being a bit naughty this afternoon).

2006-02-20T16:29:00.000-08:00

I must have bored myself with all that talk about boring shares; just jumped in and bought 200 ASX at $33, for a total of $6600. I figure unless the crash comes, they'll keep going up - they've peaked around 34.5 so far - and are unlikely to go down too dramatically. nothing's sold for me since Feb 2, which was not really the idea. I have habits to finance - renovation, art, etc - and actual work is not particularly appealing, I must say - I'm trying out for some well-paid work on Friday, but it sounds dead boring. there's that word again.

2006-02-20T16:17:00.000-08:00

no entries lately? That's because there's nothing happening. I have about $20,000 locked up in VBA, OLY and BTA; VBA keeps hovering just below what I paid for it, and I expect it will soon pop its head above water just long enough for me to slice it off and run away with only a tad more than I put in; OLY I bought way too high and am resigned to a long wait; BTA is a mad, volatile stock which I also bought too high. This week they have announced they are trialling a cure for the common cold, and testing their existing products for bird flu efficacy; if both of those come through, I may not sell my shares after all. I may keep them until they go up by a factor of ten, then sell them.

meanwhile, from my "hold" portfolio, my vote for most boring stock: RAB, which I bought at $1.28 two months ago, which is still at $1.28, which has had no trades since I bought that stock, despite a standing order for several thousand shares at $1.30, which has been there for WEEKS. it pays a tidy dividend, owns some solid properties and is dead boring. a good retirement stock, methinks. I'm not selling mine any time soon, put it that way.

2006-02-07T13:58:00.000-08:00

a PSV trade came through yesterday, earning maybe another $200-ish. Biota continues to be a bugbear; I think it has a "floor" around $1.40 as it seems not to have gone below that for a while, and bounced back by 10 cents yesterday at about $1.44. apparently The Lancet dissed their key product this month, which hasn't helped. I may have to wait until the case they have against their distribution partner comes to court - if it's strong, the shares should go up on that. late March.

have considered selling out, but reluctant to realise a loss of that size - at least a couple of thousand dollars. would take a long time to catch that up.

meanwhile, can't figure out what's happening with my special trading account. I transferred lots of money into it to cover trades, but none seems to be going in or out.

2006-02-02T13:25:00.000-08:00

one call to Comsec has scotched that plan; they don't allow short selling. which is kinda a pity because the AWB, in my untutored opinion, is going to dive again today. any company headed by people who enjoy posing with guns in Iraq has to have problems; plus it may lose its monopoly on wheat sales.

have I mentioned that I have no idea what I'm doing and that no one should rely on what I say for ANYTHING?

2006-02-01T20:13:00.000-08:00

finally, a deal came through within 24 hours: my RIN shares, bought at $16.88, sold at 10.30 the next morning for $17.25. a whacking profit of $166, BEFORE brokerage of $40. not a huge profit, but not bad for a day. and the stock peaked at $17.30, so I was lucky to make a profit at all.

next target: PSV, another gold mining stock. BGF of course went way up beyond my sale trigger, and I could have made another $400. but that's the nature of this; you can't know for sure what's coming. anyway, PSV has been hovering and bouncing up and down, and I've bought about $7000 worth at .335, with the hope that it'll reach .35 sometime in the next couple of weeks.

seriously considering a short-selling attack on the AWB, which is diving like an Olympic champion on the idiocy it committed over Iraq. what worries me about selling short is that you have to come up with the stocks on sale day; there is no option to hold on and see what happens. if I can "sell" them for enough tomorrow morning, I might go for it. All I'd need to make $200 would be a ten-cent drop on a $4.80 share; and given that the AWB is getting thrashed to death in the inquiry room, it seems likely. of course other people are probably doing the same, but not so many as are trying to ride the rising stocks up.

2006-01-31T17:21:00.000-08:00

a few lessons from today: don't buy stuff "at market" no matter how keen you are to get it; the price can jump quite a lot and you end up being the bunny who buys at the peak.

check the previous day's close before setting a price.

and if you act on an announcement, you have mere minutes. half an hour is too long.

What happened? I don't want to talk about it...maybe later.

2006-01-30T15:34:00.000-08:00

although it seemed like forever, it took three weeks to make that $300 on bgf. which is my target of $100 a week to pay the mortgage whence the funds I'm playing with are drawn. so if BTA doesn't dive on me, I might be OK. have run across a problem in the form of capital works needed on the said mortgaged property, but they can be deferred somewhat. I don't expect this market to last forever; a year of playing might be good, then I'll pull my head in.

2006-01-30T15:29:00.000-08:00

hooray. computershare sold my shares at only 4 cents below the peak. so after all that bullshit, I haven't lost money; the extra $400 will cover the double brokerage fee and the extra I paid to rebuy the shares to honour the sale I tried to make at the start of the month.

now off to purchase a quarter of the shares I started with...

2006-01-30T15:14:00.000-08:00

at last, some action: BGF, my first purchase, finally hit .44 and the sale went through the moment the auction opened this morning. Meaning I have my $10,000 back and a profit of (sound of pen scratching on paper), $295, after allowing $50 brokerage. yee-hah.

meanwhile also, my ex-employer's shares have gone up ten percent. as the evil Computershare has forced me to sell them via their system, which involves posting an order in the MAIL, I have no idea whether I caught the peak or not - all $400 of it. must call them today.

now at least I can afford to buy back the $1000 worth of their shares I wanted to get.

I won't dive into another daytrading purchase until I sell either the $10,000 of bta shares I have (which are not going anywhere right now) or the $5000 of vba.

2006-01-23T23:14:00.000-08:00

Computershare won: I am just going to sell my shares through them as even with brokerage etc, it's cheaper to sell them all and rebuy via Comsec than do the stupid complex transfer. not that selling is that simple.

my parcel of shares went down $22 today; down about $150 all up since I started trying to sell them. sigh.

2006-01-23T17:54:00.000-08:00

there are no words for the level of red tape and incompetence I'm encountering at Computershare as I try to get my ex-employer's shares transferred out of trust.

first there was a nightmare of getting my ex-employer to actually notify Computershare that I'd left, freeing up the shares I bought in a company employee plan to be sold. that was the easy bit, it seems.

Friday 13th: ring and request form to be emailed.

Tuesday 17th: ring again and make a fuss. Form arrives and is faxed and posted back to me. notice they mention a "transfer fee" and suspect it will be outrageous.

Days pass.

Tuesday 25th: ring again, to be told there is no record of form arriving. am asked have I sent the fee? no I haven't because I don't know what it is. Insist on getting more information: apparently once they find my form (if ever!), they'll write to me (2-3 days is my guess, but going on performance it might be a week) asking for $110. Then, when I've sent it, they'll bank the cheque and - this is where it gets stupid - they'll "send paperwork" to my ex-employer to be approved. again. I question this. I ask what paperwork exactly. the call centre person can't answer me. I say it could take days, weeks to get that back from my employer. and even when they do, and once they free them up, I have to get comsec to transfer the shares into my account before I can sell them. I could sell them through Computershare, but hell will freeze over before I deliver them any of my money; besides, I'm going to keep some of them.

now awaiting an email from an actual human, with a name, so I can try to sort this out.

meanwhile, Comsec tell me that the shares won't transfer anyway because of extremely minor differences in the name and address under which the shares are held and my Comsec account name. so I have to change that as well.possibly I would do better to just sell them and rebuy; that's not an option for my ex-employer's shares due to the Computershare profit thing, but it is for some others I just own outright through anothe broker.

I've lost count of the number of steps involved in doing this. too fucking many, that's for sure. meanwhile, share price drops gently like a feather in the wind...

2006-01-23T15:08:00.000-08:00

yes yes yes. I mean no, nothing's happened yet. but it will.

meanwhile, possibly out of sheer boredom, I'm going to put another $5000 into Virgin Blue and see if I can make $100. big risk for small returns. I'm sure Warren Buffett wouldn't approve.

did you know that the ASX brings its trading system online alphabetically? so even if the market opens at 10, VBA won't trade until ten past?

2006-01-19T23:13:00.000-08:00

still waiting for BTA and BGF to get their act together; it will take a while, but I'm fairly confident they'll both reach their targets. just not as fast as I'd have liked.

meanwhile, another of my potential targets, ADA, has had a huge run - up from 46 cents last week to 54 cents today. I bought $750 worth on Tuesday for my "hold" portfolio, so I made a few dollars on it this week - not as much as I lost on Toll, which I sold out of yesterday, but them's the breaks. TOL has dropped again today, so I feel I made the right decision there.

starting to look into the detailed research - the profits, the announcements. ADA, strangely enough, started to rise (or at least come back - it was a dotcom bubble stock once upon a time) after the chairman of the board gave it a "not good enough" rating last December.

2006-01-17T19:56:00.000-08:00

not having set a proper stop-loss figure, I am now paralysed by the sight of my shares dropping up to six per cent - that's six hundred dollars. do I get out? is this the crash? or am I simply condemned to a long, slow wait for them to crawl back up again? if I sell, it will take a lot of successful trades to make it up.

also, memo to self: never take stock tips from brother again. I bought a few Toll holdings shares. then Toll's courier arm were responsible for a delivery to my home, which was a pain in the ass to organise. then the shares dropped nine percent. I plan to sell them as soon as they regain their old level. if they don't, I plan to keep them as a kind of living reminder of the horrors of the stock market.

2006-01-16T00:12:00.000-08:00

so close...both my stocks came to within a cent of the target prices today, but didn't make it to the sell point.

Computershare has managed to go two business days without sending an email they promised me; I cannot wait to get my shares out of there. did I mention that their poorly worded statements led me to believe I could sell shares from my former employer, but in fact I couldn't? I think I did...

and I've sent off the info to get my cheaper trading account. I also have to tx a few shares out of my husband's name and into mine, as part of a cleanup/rationalisation program.

looking at: Zinifex and a few others. and looking forward to splitting the 20,000 into three parcels in the hope that will give me more action on a day-to-day basis.

2006-01-12T16:15:00.000-08:00

an exciting, yet fruitless couple of days; I still have $20,000 sitting in BTA and BGF, which stubbornly refused to move yesterday despite gold going even higher. both came within a cent of my sell price, though, so I think it'll be OK.

this is all teaching me a little more caution; the new strategy will be to have three lots of money out at once. two will be on a "sell at 2.5% profit" basis, to keep grabbing those small rises in the ups and downs of the market. when I have my new trading account, each deal will only cost $40, so it's doable with around $7000 per parcel. A third will be, at least until I get more nervous, on a sell-when-ready basis, when I think a stock's going to move more than three per cent in a short period.

so I've downgraded what I think I can make, but it's still more than the interest on the money in the bank.

meanwhile, I've learned what happens when you sell shares you don't have. the broker rings you in a panic. my employee share plan shares, despite being labelled "unrestricted" on the statements, and despite my having a SRN (ownership number), were actually in some obscure Computershare trust which I need to transfer them out of. hence today I was forced to buy 500 of them at five cents more than I originally sold them for, to honour the deal. Comsec kindly waived brokerage on that deal, and I seem to be spending my entire life trying to get my ex-employer to notify the trust that I've left the company, and to get the form that will allow me to get the shares out of trust. yes, they can email me the form. but they have to get someone in Sydney to do that. so it can take up to 48 hours. welcome to the world of instant electronic communications!

then, of course, I'll have to sell the original parcel of 500 shares again. hoping the stock keeps going up a little so I don't lose even more on this schemozzle.

running total at this point: lots of brokerage fees. some paper gains on my small "hold" portfolio. no big fat profits. yet.

2006-01-10T21:00:00.000-08:00

ah what the hell. this blog ain't call day trade madness for nothing.

I've put in another telephone order for $10,000 worth of Biota shares, and a sell order at 2.5 per cent above what I paid for them. of course as they went up six per cent today they won't move for a while. but clearly if it takes a week to buy, sell and clear each trade, I need more than one lot of $10,000 in the market.

meanwhile, when I get my other shares cleared into CHESS, I'll be able to dispense with the stupid and expensive phone orders. I may still set up the special trading account that has the same effect, in order to get cheaper trades, but I'm still waiting on the documentation on that to come in the snail mail.

so I've got $20,000 sitting in the market now. wheee!

2006-01-10T19:30:00.000-08:00

my 23,000 BGF shares are bobbing along just below the surface at about 1.5 per cent less than what I paid for them. Meanwhile, the alternative buy, Biota, has jumped yet another five percent after a twelve percent rise on Monday. the bird flu thing must be really scaring people; Biota makes a flu vaccine.

There is nothing I can do about this situation; I could of course pull another ten thousand out of my mortgage and chase my losses. But it's a little early in the game for that as yet. All I can do is wait for the BGF shares to bob up again to my sell level just over 2 per cent higher than I paid for them, and then see what's next. I'm certainly downgrading my estimate of how fast I can pay back my original 10,000. But as long as I'm making more than seven per cent a year - and the market overall is doing that right now - I'm OK. And even if I only make enough to make my mortgage and costs payments - about $100 a week, roughly 50 per cent profit a year - hell, that's pretty good, isn't it?

I think I need to make some of these purchases in the larger stocks, which I have a higher bank limit on, if only for speed and convenience, and to reduce the heart-in-the-mouth factor.

Meanwhile, I'm in the process of transferring some other shares to my Commonwealth account in order to bump up that limit on what I can buy.

2006-01-09T15:37:00.000-08:00

hehe. ten minutes later, I've lost money. this is going well...

red tape

2006-01-09T15:32:00.000-08:00

17 minutes and 19 seconds on the phone to Commsec later, I have my shares, and some information: they place limits on trades, even if you have the money in your account. and of course my trade was over that limit. so I had to do it on the phone, paying $54 instead of $30 for the purchase. I can open a new special trading account, for which I now have the forms. But there is still a limit, and the issue that it takes three days for funds to settle - more like four for earnings, too.

I suppose there is some nifty software somewhere that will do all this for me. But for the moment, I think I'll just go slowly, as long as the trend is upwards. at least I can sell as much as I like online.

one more thing for today: to subscribe to the Commsec IPO newsletter. the hardest thing will be finding a new stock every time I sit down to do this, which I thought would be every day but now looks like every 3-4 days.

2006-01-09T14:22:00.000-08:00

OK, here we go.

Trade#1 is BGF, Ballarat Gold Fields. It's at a record high, but that's because the price of gold is up and the mine is about to go into production. It went up five percent or so yesterday (remember, don't rely on my figures, they're rough). So if I go for just a two percent rise, plus the cost of my trades ($60 a time to get in and out), that would be a good start.

It closed at .425 yesterday. If I can get it for about that today, I need around 23,000 shares ($9775). If I then sell at .440, that's $10,120. That's up $345, leaving a profit of $280.

This is all of course what I want to happen. In practice, the shares could dive and I could do my money. Exciting, isn't it?

do I know what I'm doing?

2006-01-08T23:03:00.000-08:00

So, you're probably wondering: this girl, has she got any idea? In short, no.

But a newspaper here recently took eight sets of stock tips from experts, an astrologer, a schoolchild and a dartboard - yes, a dartboard - and guess who won? The dartboard. If I had a monkey, I'd let it pick my stocks. Actually, one day I might let my two-year-old son have a go. Just watch me.

These are my starting rules: I'll probably add more.

1) Big trades. $5,000 minimum. Any less and I lose too much in brokerage - $30 to buy, $30 to sell.

2) When I reach my target, get out. If I've set a $300 profit target for a particular trade, I sell then. And no whingeing later about how I could have made $500. The point is to make a little bit every day, not somehow double my money in a day (though that would be nice).

3) Play percentages. Who cares if a stock only goes up ten cents: if it started at two dollars, that's a great return.

4) Floss.

Madness, fever, complete insanity, whatever...

2006-01-08T22:44:00.000-08:00

Well, I really wanted to call this blog Day Trade Fever, but hey, all the good names are gone.

So here I am, unemployed, with a bit of money from a redundancy payout. I could put it on the mortgage and save myself seven percent a year - sensible but boring. I could blow it all on art - fun, but not really wise. I could put it in the bank - even more boring. I could go to the casino and put it all on 28 - possibly highly lucrative, most likely a short thrill followed by years of kicking myself in the backside (ouch!)

Today I bought a few shares. No big deal there, but for the first time, I looked really hard at what's available online, even just through my bank's trading interface. I also noticed that two of the shares I bought jumped between seven and 12 percent. In a single day.

I have no trading expertise. I have never read anything by Warren Buffett. I have no special trading software. But I have a plan, an Internet connection, and $10,000.

So here goes. Stick with me: I'll post my strategy, my thoughts, my buys, sells, losses and a running total, more or less. Short-term, the goal is to repay my $10,000 into the mortgage: then, it's to infinity and beyond!