In medicine they talk of “never events” or things that should never happen, such as leaving a surgical instrument inside a patient. Failing to buy OPXA on strong drug news today as it broke above its recent high of $2.85 was a “never event” for me … I messed up a trade with an almost perfect setup. It should have been an easy $1 per share trade from $2.88 to $3.88 or so. Learn from this so you don’t mess this up in the future.
By the way, it is still not too late to sign up for Tim Sykes’ Las Vegas Seminar on October 18th and 19th.
Daily profit: ($331.00)
Disclosure: No positions. I have a disclosure policy.
In the future I will make sure to check multi-day charts on all pre-market leaders to ensure I don’t miss stocks like OPXA in the future.
Other then IB is there a way to find pre-market leaders?
Also. I think you played it safe as did I. Kept losses to a minimum, mine were 3.5% Not bad considering the stock was in play and did have upward momentum. Those dips just screwed us …
We had a right to be scared though… its rare to see a stock explode like this.
Hope we catch some of the many more to come.
John — the point is that from the correct entry point, $2.88 (the break of $2.85) there were no big dips. Even from my entry point I was never more than 5 cents in the red. It pays to trade scared but not so scared you cannot take reasonable risks.
Do you normally back off a trade once it hits that 5% loss rate, cutting losses quick. Cause .05 cents in red is not near that loss rate.
More important, did you know about this stock before 9:30 today, or was it something that popped out after the morning opened? I’d love to have a few minutes to scan stocks that are opening up with high pre-market gains.
John — it depends. I usually like a 3% stop initially but I tend to have my stop a little too tight. OPXA never hit my stop … I just wussed out, thinking it was up too much on the day already.
OPXA crossed IB’s premarket list way right after they announced the news, I think before 9am EST. I don’t know of any other broker that allows for scanning for biggest gainers in pre-market. I’m sure some have that feature.
The NASDAQ website has a listing of most active stocks in AH/PM, the quotes are 15 minutes delayed but you can at least see who’s on the move, and track them through another method.
I am really laughing but at least throw a lucky man a bone. I did make a measley 100 on a stock that moved 300%, lol, is that not something, still laughing.
Evidently the company’s press release was misleading: http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/story/10595924/1/opexas-surge-a-headscratcher-biobuzz.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA
This is a subset of data from a study that was finished awhile ago.