Clear Trades

Another dumb buy, taking my losses on this one before it gets worse. I bought my 200 shares at an average price of 10.99 per share.

Realized a loss of -$372.02, for a return of -16.87%.

GE, Losses, Sell

Cutting more losses here. I bought my 200 shares at an average price of 21.35.

Realized a loss of -$554.03, for a return of -12.94%.

Losses, Sell, SSO

I finally took my losses on this one and let it go. I should have cut the cord much sooner, but I kept hanging on.

I bought 250 shares of AA (Alcoa) on Feb 2, 2008 at 7.8775 per share. I’m sure I could hold this for a while and see a better recovery—obviously I’m not a fan of selling at what may very well prove to be the market bottom, but I wanted to buy UYG instead and I expect to see enough gains with that to make up for this loss.

Realized a loss of $470.90, for a return of -23.83%.

Update: On February 25th, I received a dividend of $42.50 for my Alcoa shares. This changes my loss on the stock to $428.40, for a return of -21.68%.

AA, Losses, Sell

I sold my total long position in BAC at 5.77.

I went long BAC (Bank of America) on Feb 4th, buying 500 shares at 5.20 and later in the day 200 shares at 4.90.

Of course it would have been great if I had sold on Friday or Monday when the stock was trading in the high 6s and even touched the low 7s. I guess maybe I got greedy, or maybe I didn’t have a good plan going in, or maybe I bet too much on the bank bailout speech on Tuesday. I probably messed up on all 3 of those points. In the future, I’m going to be more careful to put in stop loss orders when I’ve seen such a large gain.

I’ve been growing more uncomfortable with my large Financial Sector exposure, and since I have a profit in BAC I decided it was time to sell.

Realized a gain of $437.97, for a return of 12.19%.

BAC, Gains, Sell

*Note – I made this trade before launching ClearTrades.com so the details are a little light. You can expect to see more information on trades made in the future.

Sold my 25 shares of SDS at 77.62.

The market was lower for the first couple of hours of the day, but I was too late in seeing the reversal. I could have sold this in the morning for a nice little gain. Instead, I finally ahd to give up hope on a further decline and take my losses so I could move on.

Realized a loss of -$70.27, for a return of -3.51%.

Losses, SDS, Sell

*Note – I made this trade before launching ClearTrades.com so the details are a little light. You can expect to see more information on trades made in the future.

Sold my total long position in DIG, 50 shares at 29.00.

DIG was still looking pretty good, but I wanted to put the money elsewhere and I had a small gain so I took it.

Realized gain of $37.99, for a return of 2.70%.

DIG, Gains, Sell

*Note – I made this trade before launching ClearTrades.com so the details are a little light. You can expect to see more information on trades made in the future.

Sold 170 shares of SSO at 22.15, clearing out my total position.

I saw the market turning down at this point, which actually turned out to be accurate, though I could have still sold for a slightly better price that day. With the market turning, I sold my SSO for a loss and went long SDS instead. SDS is an S&P 500 short ETF as opposed to the SSO, which is an S&P 500 long ETF.

Realized loss of -$157.23, for a return of -4.02%.

Losses, Sell, SSO