Loosing My Religion

Okay heres the long and short of what has happened over last week.

I jumped out of GOOG and PBR with profits of 5.5% and 9.5% respectively. I jumped into ARTW a big mistake, thinking that this stock was going to go higher than the 400% it had traveled. I lost big time (16.25%). Enough to send me into a state of deep anti-blog depression.

I wanted to take time and analyze the state of paralysis that overtook me as I started to watch double digits percentage losses. I wanted to take a moment and think about the big mistake that most investors make when they start seeing a decision they make go south - hoping they will make back their profits. This only works on companies that have a sound foundation and Art Way Manufacturing does not. They make farm machinery. Farmers are strapped for cash! This stock was more than likely overinflated and I thought I could ride this wave but when the floor fell out from under me, all I could do is sit there and watch my hard earned dollars evaporate into the same diesel smoke Art Way Manufacturing machinery emits! I have learned my lesson and now I am ready to get back on that horse.

I finally sold the ARTW stock and immediately reversed my position. I took whatever money I had left and sold ARTW short. I held my breath and on Friday it dropped. Today it looks like it will drop 10%. Lets keep our fingers crossed.

For the beginning investor who is new to the idea of making money when a stock price falls - its called shorting a stock. Whenever this stock drops too, I make money. Its like betting the stock is going to fall and is a handy investment tool for the bad news scenarios. Usually brokerages won't charge you anything to sell a stock short. It is usually an option when you go to trade a particular stock. You might see buy, sell, sell short, or buy to cover. Buy and sell are obvious. Sell short is what I did to ARTW. When I make back the 16.5% I lost, I will buy to cover and hopefully recoup my loses late last week.

Oh and in the time it took me to write this I have purchased a small amount of Etrade (ETFC). I couldn't resist and I think it will be a good long term play.

Scottrade back online 10:13 - Could it be Etrade (ETFC)

Can someone please tell me how many millions Scottrade just lost? I would have to start investigating E-trade. I know this stock has been pretty beat up and I know they have a huge debt (billions) that has made this stock trade in the penny stock category but after seeing Scottrade blow up for an hour, I have to think that there might be a slight migration over to E-trade...

Maybe the hack is E-trade (ETFC) ? It wouldn't be the first time a company tried some corporate espionage. Wouldn't that be funny if Scottrade investigated the hack attempt and found out it was Etrade ?

Just wondering and you can't sue people for wondering!

p.s. My buddy from Florida who just visited with me highly recommened E-trade. I was going to label it a good stock pick before this happened after some preliminary research .

Confirmed - Scottrade's website is offline

This is an interesting turn of events. It looks like if you try and log into your account you get an error page. This is being broadcasted on this blog first! at 9:41 AM on the 17th of December.

This cold be a hack attempt or just a site outage. This would not be the first time Scottrade.com has has sub come to a hack attempt. They notified customers last year about an attack that left clients account's that were linked to scottrade in jeopardy. I may have to remove them from our recommend lists.

We have other discount online brokerages recommended on our links list at the bottom of this site.


This is what it looks like when you try to access you account

When Scottrade Doesn't Work

Its been a while, sorry for the hiatus. I just can't believe scottrade.com 's website is not working. This has to be historical. When you try to log into scottrade you get a 404 page. I have to call them. More posts soon.