Linda’s Trades

Here are my trades for the week of August 17 – 21, 2020.  I have less than 3 weeks to learn how to get all my videos completed, keep up with parents and students, and slip trading in when and if necessary. Basically fitting stock trading into a busy life.

At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to listen to Investor’s Business Daily Live show, well, live. But I’ve realized that it’s no different than if I had a radio show on in the background. I’ve been finding a good compromise for listening while I work on tasks for school at home. Busy work you might say. And I don’t always listen to the whole show which I’m okay with.

Look to Multi Task

Walking in the early morning is still part of my routine and that’s when I’m listening to trading podcasts. Between the podcasts and IBD Live, I’m getting about 2 hours of education every morning without taking much of my day. For further time saving tips, see How Much Time Does It Take to be a Successful Trader?  

Week’s Summary

Oh, the week before was a loss, so a gain the following week is always very sweet.  My weekly gain was 5.77%. That just might be my biggest weekly gain. And it was also my lightest week of trading. That just goes to show that you can have a day job and still run a portfolio.

Fitting My Trades During the Day

Except for listening to IBD Live while I took care of answering a zillion emails to parents and students, I really didn’t participate in the market a whole lot. I do have another job. This week happened to smile down on me because a few of the stocks I had, took their turns in making great gains. That’s the beauty of still being able to have a life outside of stock trading.

If you do the preparation and buy stocks correctly, you can sit back and watch the gains in a bull market. I will say that my latest regret is not letting stocks run longer than I did (Tesla.) Sometimes I think we feel the need to be more active traders when that’s not always the answer.

Outcome of New Trades This Week

• TQQQ – I bought this on Tuesday at $133.37 and it closed Friday at $141.32, a 6% paper profit.
• ADBE – This add-on Friday was at $471.33 and closed just a smidge higher at $473.22, .4% gain. I wasn’t expecting much in one day. It certainly wasn’t a day trade or a swing trade.
• And that’s it for the week. The only sell I did was my Qualcomm position from last week with a very small loss.

What will this next week bring? I’m thinking about buying more TSLA because the stock split happens August 31st. I also will look into CRSP as I listened to a podcast about all this genetics and DNA companies coming up with cures. I’ll need to do more research before I jump in. Other than that, I’ll just keep a close ear on the ground for market shifts.

Monday, August 17, 2020

Today was one of those days that you live for when trading stocks. You pick quality stocks at the right price and then you wait for something to happen. Hopefully the price goes up.

Last Wednesday I bought Tesla at $1464. It had been making a short base and had just started reversing its downward trend. A couple of months ago I had bought it in the upper $800’s and sold it when it went to $930, patting myself on the back for making a $500 profit. Then it shot up to $1700, leaving me in the dust. It would be natural to not get back into the stock at this higher price, angry that I would have to pay a higher price because of my lack of patience.

Forget the Past, Look to the Future

But I put my past history aside and realized it had more potential, especially when it announced the 5 for 1 stock split. It has gone up 4 days in a row, with today increasing 11.2% alone. In four days I’ve seen a 25.4% paper profit! If it weren’t for the stock split news, I’d probably be selling a few shares to take some profit. But I want my shares to multiply so I’m going to hang on to them.

It makes me a little nervous to see Tesla dangling so high on the chart. I expect it to go down some this week, but hopefully not significantly. It’s acting like Apple. When they announced Apple’s 4 for 1 split, it shot up too.  I had bought that stock in April and May so I’ve just been sitting on that for now.

Quality Stocks at Proper Prices Bring Profit

Two other stocks did extremely well today too. NVDA (Nvidia) rose 6.7% as well as SQ (Square) at 7.4%. My three recent losing stocks AMD, QCOM, and SPOT are still slightly in the red, but AMD and SPOT both were positive for the day. Therefore, they aren’t draining my portfolio as much as they were on Friday. I’m just sitting and watching those, thinking they will wake up over the next week or two.

My account rose 2.2%, almost back up to its high of 10 days ago. The total just keeps climbing, sometimes a bunch at a time, then with an elevator drop, and then on to new highs. I thought for sure that the gravy train was going to slow significantly down a couple of months ago, but the market just keeps powering on. And I intend to stay in it.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Today my positions were mixed. Half were down and half were up. The good thing about it was that the worst lowest percentage was -1.87% whereas the highest performing were 4% (AMZN) and 2.8% (TSLA). So my account was up 1.2%, the highest it’s been since the crash.

My stocks are rotating through on their profits. Today ADBE (Adobe) finally showed up today and AAPL (Apple) came back to the table. NVDA (Nvidia) lost a little ground from yesterday but not much. AMD (Advanced Micro Devices), QCOM (Qualcomm), and SPOT (Spotify) are still limping along with a small loss. I’m rooting for these underdogs. I know they can do better!

Big Aha Moment Today

Today I got another aha moment with IBD Live. We were shown a comparison chart on their signature Marketsmith charts. They put TQQQ which is triple QQQ (the Exchange Traded Fund ETF of the NASDAQ) and used April 6, 2020 (the follow through day) as the starting point. Then they put other stocks in and we could see how they compared side by side. What really opened my eyes was when they put QQQ in. Now I had slowly gotten into QQQ on the follow through day, and I have a big position in it. I’ve made 25% from it. But if I had bought TQQQ, I would’ve made 3 times the money. I knew it existed, but I was thinking of it more as a day/swing trade option. The next time the market tanks, I’m jumping into TQQQ right away.

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

As from the red “ink”, you can tell today the market went down, as well as my portfolio. But really not that much, -.64%. That means part of yesterday’s profit is still intact.

I kind of had to laugh. Although there was a point when the market strengthened and many of my stocks were positive, when it was negative, it was yesterday’s down stocks that were up. EBAY and SPOT. It’s like they had taken a number and today was their day. It would’ve been nice if they had really jumped up today, but I’ll take anything positive.

I was looking to buy a very small position today but nothing jumped out at me. I did decide to sell my QCOM position as it just wasn’t doing anything. Then I went back to see last week’s trades’ post to see why I bought it. I forgot to write it down. When I examined the stock closer yesterday, I checked out the fundamentals and saw that it had a -49% sales growth. Why did I buy it??

Always Check the Fundamentals

If it had great sales growth, I would’ve been more patient with it. I paid $113.13 a share and sold half of it for $112.01. It still was going down so I quickly sold the other half for $111.91. It closed at $111.04 so maybe that was a good exit. I didn’t lose much and I’m still wondering why I bought it in the first place. Regardless, it was a bad price to buy it at. The good news is that it didn’t cost me very much.

Thursday, August 20, 2020

This morning started out negative and then it seemed to move sideways slightly on the up side. Then the afternoon seems to give it strength and it ended very positive.

You CAN Teach an Old Dog New Tricks!

I was contemplating what I learned on Tuesday about buying TQQQ instead of QQQ. I realized that if I had bought that instead of QQQ, I would’ve had triple the profit. I’m not sure how leveraged ETF’s work, just that they work twice or in this case 3 times the amount of the regular one. So if QQQ goes up 1%, TQQQ should go up 3%. But the reverse is true as well. You might make a lot more money but you can also lose a lot of money.

But I didn’t know what I didn’t know back in April. That doesn’t mean I can’t jump in later. So this morning I watched the 5 minute bar of TQQQ during the first part of the opening. When it started to show some strength and volume, I jumped in and bought some shares. I came out ahead today with it gaining 3.8%.

Everyone (or Stock) Deserves a Second Chance

Tesla continues to just go bananas. There is another example of missing out earlier because of lack of experience. Because I knew it had great potential, I gave it another chance last week and today it is up 3.56% bringing my total to 36.8%. If it weren’t going to split, I’d probably be stressing over whether to sell it or not and just take the nice profit. But I honestly feel that no one is going to be dumping significant shares and missing out on that split. The same goes for Apple. That was a great increase as well today.

TQQQ was my only purchase today. I had meant to buy a few add on shares of Adobe, but it left without me and it seemed too extended. I am almost 100% invested anyways, so it didn’t bother me too much.

My account was up 2.1% today, wiping out those 3 big down days of the prior week and bringing the total to another new high. Now it’s time to think defensively! Big swings up bring big swings down. TQQQ will be the first to go. Got to be flexible!

Friday, August 21, 2020

This day I got to add my 3 shares of Adobe to my ROTH account. That’s all the cash I had. In fact I had to put in a limit order because I needed the stock to go down a dollar before I could buy the three. It complied and the sale went through and came up a couple of dollars at the close.

Once again, because I have a day job, I only sporadically checked in on the market and my portfolio. At the close, half my stocks were negative and half were positive. Apple and Nvidia had made 5.15% and 4.47% gains respectively, so my gain overall was 1.1% for the day.

Until next time,

Linda

Linda Davis (“Publisher”) provides this website (www.stockmarketgal.com) for informational purposes only. All information on this website is information of a general nature and is not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or entity or on any specific security or investment product. In reading this website, you understand that Publisher is not advising you personally concerning the nature, potential, value, or suitability of any particular security, portfolio of securities, transaction, investment strategy or other matter. In making an investment decision, each investor must rely on his, her or its own examination of the investment, including the merits and risks involved, should consult with his, her or its own investment, trading, financial, legal, tax, accounting and other advisors, and should not construe any information on this website as investment, trading, financial, legal, tax, accounting or other advice. From time to time, Publisher or her affiliates may hold positions in securities discussed on this website and will disclose those positions if applicable, but neither Publisher nor any of her affiliates receives any compensation from the issuers of any securities discussed. Publisher does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of any information provided, either expressly or impliedly, and expressly disclaims all warranties of any kind.