"If you come to the market afraid of what you'll lose, you'll never make any money." - James Altucher

 

    Thursday before close Cyberlux dropped this piece of news . I've seen this exact play before on this same company.

         I bought them on July 1st when all the pumpers turned their attention to them on twitter 20 minutes before the close. The following Monday I had an early meeting so I sold into the morning spike for a small gain. The stock faded the rest of the day. A week or so later I missed buying when they dropped news before the weekend. ( I believe it was a shareholder update before July 4th weekend but I can't find it now). 

      Back to July 8th, promoted stock, recent runner, bought 100th of a cent over the break out level, news, twitter hype, and history of gap ups after all of these things. I felt good about the trade.

       On July 9th I looked at the open and saw that it was gapping up around .0010 from my purchase meaning at least a $50 gain on my small position. As it got closer to the market open two things were in my mind.

1. The James Altucher quote listed above. This stuck with me from one of the round table discussions (Timline I think). 

        I knew that my desire to see some green in my account after some very lackluster trading this month had a high likelihood of causing me to cut this before I could truly make any profit. Further more. I had more settled funds to trade with this morning. Rather than fearing the "terrifying" thought of a loss I should watch for consolidation over the break out and try to add to my position. 

2. In the market wizards books one of the traders mentioned to manage his psychology he always moved his risk to the market open and view that as his entry. 

        It looked like the market open would be .008. Enough above my entry to keep a gain from being a loss but definitely limiting how much I made. This will be my new risk. 

      As the market opened, $CYBL does what it typically does after a gap up. Chopped around a bit and then started to move a bit lower. These gap ups haven't held very well from what I've seen. As I watched my potential gain fade I cut the trade off. Taking my small safe win and forsaking my plan of not being afraid of what I could lose and moving my risk to .008. 

     I watched the trade from the corner of my eye the rest of the day as it bounced from .0081 and closed near ATHs. 

I was right. My plan was good. The timing was right. But I turned a great trade into a good trade because I can't manage the idea of another loss (although my trade history definitely communicates I go looking for them).

I felt I needed to review this trade for myself and thought I'd share in case someone else finds it helpful.