IRA game, first day's results

Trade of CRDN did not happen, but PNW purchase has executed. Stock continued sliding down and ended with loss of almost 0.5%. I put an order to sell if stock gains 2.5% tomorrow. Figures, the idea to split the money into two chunks wasn't a stupid one given my tendency to try to set purchase price lower than a stock may touch during a day. What do I do with the other half? The problem is, I can't do anything today, as there's this weird scheme where money are not in the cash account, but rather in a money-market sweep, so the order that has expired did not actually free the funds. This sucks. Probably I should call customer service and ask them to remove this unhelpful feature. Or I'd dig around their website to find where this option is disabled.

Overall, today was a rather good day as market went down so much, whoever wanted to find bargains have found a plenty. Candidates for tomorrow: LUKOY, that has this profile of declining abruptly and recovering just as fast; also FORM, NTGR, CEGE, in addition to whatever I used today to shortlist opportunities.

IRA game: hard to overcome one's nature

I ended up placing two orders, splitting the funds down the middle, but I somehow doubt those will be filled as I set the limit a bit too low, it seems. First is CRDN, for which I set the buy order limit at 55.98 which is seemingly the support level it could descend to... but unlikely this will be today. Second, it's PNW, with limit price of 48.51: slightly more realistic, looking at today's trend so far. We'll see later if any of those gets filled. But one important observation that can be made so far is that, it appears, I refuse to take greater risk still. Took me about 1 hour for everything... calling it a day, evening analysis pending.

IRA game: preparations for tomorrow

Starting with boring stuff: tried to get more sleep today, as tomorrow I'll need to get up early. Didn't quite work, but I'm not giving up yet, will try to get to bed earlier than usual in the evening.

Next preparation: I'm shortlisting a whole bunch of stocks using tools provided by my broker. I decided that I should add to the stocks I monitored myself for some period. Fortunately, there's a place to draw on other's experience: The Motley Fool Caps game. There sure are folks that know their trade (pun intentional) over there. Since I'm still scared shitless of selling stocks short, my strategy then would be: find good stocks that had fallen in price and likely to recover. How do I know a good stock? Well, I might not know, really, but those folks at the top of their game ratings, presumably, would.

Then again, even the best of the best make mistakes sometimes, due to almost random nature of the markets. Which means, if a stock in a winning portfolio suffered a continuous decline, this is not a good pick for me. With those considerations in my mind, I'm adding MSCC, MDC, AKAM, JBLU, SUF, JSDA, CRDN, BOOM to my watch list. I'll also watch the news early tomorrow for any fresh ideas.

IRA game: where to now?

It may have took over a month for funds transfer to complete, but today I was notified by email that my IRA funds have arrived to my broker's account. It's time to start planning strategy and executing.

Initially, I thought I'll put the entire sum on the line: investing into one stock at a time. Now I'm not so sure. Splitting the entire pot into 2 or 3 chunks and extending trading periods somewhat may have its benefits. After all, what are the chances my picks would do as I'd expect within a range of one day? Extremely small... So far, whenever I'd buy a stock, for a period of several days to a several months (several years for rare few like Netflix) it would be underwater. So... I'm torn.

Another issue, what is it that I'm to buy? Ive been following a couple dozens of companies more or less closely (having invested in about half of those on my watch list), and I've collected a list of other companies that I consider risky due to even greater lack of knowledge. Among those, I will need a company that is trending upwards in greater scheme of things, but one that has suffered a setback recently. So, what am I to choose from the likes of AMD, INTC, CHRT, BDCO, EWT, ÈRTS, NTDOY, NFLX, ADRU, NOK, NBR, DWA, PNW, EPR, OXY, COP, CMG, OMG, THQI, TM, ENER, LUKOY, SPSN, etc.? I'm overwhelmed and confused.

IRA game: the constraints

• free trades are allowed during first 45 days since funds get rolled over from my other institution; means there may be about 32 trading days
  
• need to space trades to avoid day trader qualification (4 in- and out trades of same stock in any 5 consecutive trading days) that will lock lots for 90 days, as the amount of the account is WAY below $25000 margin requirement; this means 3 days in a row purchases should be performed in the morning of one day but sales can occur the next day only
• will still avoid penny stocks; will try to select from stocks I'm a little familiar with
  
• will only be able to place trades in the morning or in the evening after market close, so use of limit trades would be used to close a position, and probably sometimes to open one as well
  
• will not be able to track the stock price during the day
• short sales are still a new thing for me, so probably out of the question
• this is not a marginable account
• comments to this blog are moderated

Update: money from my Traditional IRA has not been deposited into broker's account yet, so no trades today, another day of idle research.

Transferred my IRA to stock broker...

...and got 45 days of free trades. Another part of the promotional offer is some money management software... right, just checked, it's the MS Money. So, what should I do? I wanted for some while to have an account that I could use more aggressive investing strategy than I do usually, that is, buy and hold unless a position has bombed out, or unless I need money to pay taxes with. I'm even thinking I could do that and report on the success (or lack thereof) here. Wonder, can I run this train of the cliff completely?

I mean, of course I could (and I will, once I'm here anyway) increase the amount of Google AdSense ads on these pages to offset losses caused by risky investments in under-researched companies. That I could do sure. But will that be a fun trip or will it quickly become a terrible chore?

So, here I go, I'm going to pretend that this blog is actually being read by somebody, and will post this question, would this be interesting to anybody if I did just that? One thing is certain, I will try to use those 45 days of fee-less service to increase those measly 4 figures. Whether I'd write about it, that is a different question.