The Final Day!

Well, here we are; my penultimate day of trading has come to a close and my final opportunity to make money is tomorrow. This week has certainly been the busiest so far. Since monday, I have bought three additional stocks and sold one. Here is a recap of how the numbers looked:

ADSK: Bought on monday at $47.73, closed today at $47.82. Contrary to what I expected, the stock did not build over the week. Despite a huge announcement of 3D printing advancements on wednesday, the stock did not do much at all. However, tomorrow is the big day and I am hoping for big things. I am glad I have at least gained a little money on this stock and I am very excited to see what will happen tomorrow, my fingers are certainly crossed.

CSCO: Bought on tuesday, I am trying to gather up as many >$50 tech stocks as possible and cisco is known for being a profitable stock. After watching CNBC and seeing the hosts rave about it as a high performing stock, I decided to buy one share at $22.97. From tuesday until today, the stock actually performed quite well. However, with my history of having a stock do well, then plummet, I decided to sell today at $23.84. I am glad I have won on at least one stock and I think I got out at the right time.

SYMC: Bought yesterday @ $21.32. Again, another solid looking tech company. There are not many good tech companies with prices around the $20 mark, but Symantec is a very well respected company and is incredibly solid with its $16 billion market cap. Again, with SYMC, all the research I conducted indicated a lot of profitability and is considered a 5 star stock by S&P capital IQ. I really think I am on to something with these large tech companies with low asking prices.

GE: Good old GE, what don't they make? No seriously.... What don't they make? I wouldn't be surprised if they came out with a line of pillows. Anyway, Another huge tech company with a cheaper stock. Bought one share this morning at $26.63.


With this many tech companies now in my portfolio, one HAS to do well. I will be utterly devastated if this little plan I have going on does not work out for me.

Final Week!

Well, I'm starting this week with a clean slate. I sold AFOP on friday and I am still reeling from the loss after it looked so promising. After a lot of research, I decided to buy one share of Autodesk today. I bought one share for $47.73 and I am really hoping it will due as well as I think. Although I tried to promise myself not buy on a whim, I pretty much did that just for this stock. As I was scrolling through the TDAmeritrade home page I saw a few articles on Autodesk and that it will report it's earnings on friday. Although I am early to the party, I am really hoping that this will pay off. Being that Autodesk is a tech company, I have pretty high expectations. With the tech industry booming, I am sure that the Q1 results will be to my advantage. The reason I bought the stock so early in the week is that I think the stock will pick up steam throughout the week then boom on friday whenever the results are announced. There have been numerous reports about ADSK being projected as a top stock for 2014 so hopefully this will pay off well.

This Week's Plan

Still dealing with the failure that is my invest in AFOP, I truly need to finish on a high note. As I previously mentioned, I am almost glad that I have had such bad luck because I really believe it is teaching me a valuable lesson on the uncertainty of the stock market. As far as this week goes,  I have compiled a list of 7 stocks and I will watch them closely as soon as the market opens tomorrow so that I can get a good idea as to how the will grow/decay. I plan on buying 2-3 of these stocks depending on how their projections look. This is essentially my plan from last week, but I will be far more vigilant and will sell as soon as possible at the first warning. I will try to accumulate as many daily gains as possible and hopefully those will add up so that I am looking at actually making a profit, let alone $117. As I research these 7 companies tomorrow, I will also look for any news about them so that I can get further understanding as to what might cause a change in the stock's price. This is my last week of trading so I plan on being in high gear until the very last transaction. While this project has not made me any money, it has certainly been fun and I cannot wait to compile all of my numbers and make the graphs to represent the data.

Things Are Not Working Out...

Well, AFOP is currently at $17.51. Since I bought the stock, it lost 12% in value and I really do not think I am going to get the $117 I wanted. Unless a miracle occurs in the next week I really think this project will turn out to be a failure. However, while the valuation of my account is going down, my knowledge of the stock market is going up. Everyday I learn something new. While I do feel defeated, I am not giving up. I still have a full week and I really hope something miraculous occurs. I will work up a plan for sunday's blog and hopefully start getting some money. This project has totally defeated the hubris I carried that picking stocks was easy. While I still do want to get involved with stocks as part of my career, I will do so with far more respect for those who were able to make money "easily."

AFOP Looks to Be a Loser

Purchase price: $19.70, today's close: $18.47.

The stock which I thought would perform the best for me has turned out to loose the most. I think this truly shows the volatility of the stock market and how it really is hard to predict where the prices will go. As I mentioned before, everything I have read on the stock says to buy heavy, but that really is not working out too well for me earnings. These numbers are really disheartening and I think I should be more cautious with my spending. It truly is funny how, in comparison with my other account, when I actually knew what I was doing, I did far worse than when I had no idea what was going on and I invested blindly. Being that all of these sites do recommend that I retain my AFOP stock, I guess I will hold onto it for a little while longer and try to wait out the storm. I will do some additional research tonight and tomorrow and hopefully get a good list of $10-30 stocks to buy to diversify my portfolio in hopes of gains. I hope this current drought will just be a blip on the radar and hopefully the money will start to come in soon!

The Plan For the Week

For the coming week, I plan on making multiple trades a day. Now that I know that a stock can fluctuate so much, I will try to only buy a stock when advertised on TV for that day. Additionally, I will try to keep from buying stocks more than $30.00 as I said on friday, this diversification allows for(hopefully) greater growth in a variety of stocks. I will also try to spend more time watching CNBC and reading the Wall Street Journal to get a better understanding of what is causing the stocks to go up. This will help to show if a growth will be ephemeral or more long term. I believe that this week will be the most involved on my part and I will try to refrain from sitting back and letting the stocks do whatever they do. I am really excited to see how this approach will be different from the way I have been trading in weeks past. I am rather disappointed that the only change that has occurred in two full weeks of trading has been a few cents, but hopefully, with the time I have left I can start making some real money.

This Week's Changes

As mentioned in my last blog, I sold both PFG and MSFT. I sold MSFT for 40.00 even, giving me a $0.33 loss and I sold PFG for $46.65, giving me a $0.22 gain. AFOP ended today at $20.17 which shows a $0.47 gain since when I bought it. Therefore, I have not even made a dollar after two weeks of trading. I believe that I need to change the way I trade. Instead of holding stocks for periods of time such as 3-5 days, I think I need to get into moment-moment trading. I really doubt I will be able to make much more if I keep trading the way I am. Furthermore, I think smaller stocks will be the way to go from now on. The smallest stock I bought has shown the most growth of anything and having diversification in my portfolio allows for the possibility of further growth. I may actually buy a second share of AFOP, because every trading forum recommends it as an great stock to own. I will continue with with CNBC watching, and Wall Street Journal reading to influence my choices, but I will try now to not keep a stock for more than two days.