ARTX - Arotech breaks the ice for Q2

And in a chilling way. It had been two weeks since I even got to really look at charts and stocks, and emotions were the culprit. Before getting into the trade, I wanted to note that I finally got all my new accounts setup, funds transferred, and my excel workbook put together for my clients and myself. I personally transferred most of my funds from my Ameritrade Apex account into a new Ameritrade Izone account which gives me $5 flat fee trades. Unexpectedly, I also got margin approval on the new account, which for me at 19 is something I haven’t had before. I have always just traded on margin in clients accounts, not my own. Needless to say, I welcome the added leverage.

Now onto the Arotech, ARTX play. I just whiped open my intraday charting screens, streamer, lvl 2 quotes, and last sale screens, and the stock was already under my watch list. Now, I hadn’t done any research prior to this, and just saw what I thought was an opportunity to get into the stock at a good price (the stock had reversed on positive news and was down some 10%+). The stock was getting the life sucked out of it, and for mid afternoon, I thought it was a good buy (I will explain why this was wrong later). Walking into it mentally the only thing I felt was emotion, which should have shot fireworks off in the first place but didn’t. I decided to buy 11,000 shares at $.4672, not knowing a target price at all, just to buy (not good). Luckily, my discipline did come through though on the protect my position front and I made a call that if it fell under $.46 I would sell.

Amongst a couple other factors, I should have known better, and not even 30 seconds later a seller stepped in and sold a 100k+ block. This was surprising to me since I had only been looking at sales on the stock for the last three minutes, but later would find out that this had been going on all day. Took maybe five perhaps ten minutes before the stock fell under $.46, and then smarts kicked in and I realized what I had done. Emotions are a wild thing, and sometimes they are your best friend, but in the stock market they are your worst enemy. The only way to tackle it is with set rules that you define before stepping in. That way, your mind can’t play games with you. Back to the stock, I ended up selling my 11k block at $.4557, which left me with just under a 3% loss after commissions.

Immediately after recording the loss, I wrote down under my notes, “Bad Trade - Emotions got involved”. A bad trade it was, but there is also a great flip side to this coin. Recapping, I was very content with my discipline on getting out so quick and sticking to my rules. Not even 30 minutes later the stock was down another two pennies which would have ended me up with about a 7 or 8% loss and a huge blow to my confidence. It is important to look back on your trades and point the negative or what you did wrong, but also to point out the positive and what you did right. Some of my best trades of my life were the ones where I lost huge sums of money. Why? Because they helped shape the rules and discipline I now have. This day trade reallyr just got my mind back into the ball game, and reminded me of the game I was actually playing. If I do make another trade this week, it will be researched beforehand, and I will have a set strategy walking in, simple as that .