First, I entered the order as a test to see if I understood how it would work. I was willing to sell the stock (in which I have a tidy profit) if the trigger got hit. I had an idea the stock would weaken at some point during the day (which it did) and this was a good one to experiment on.

Secondly, I put it in as a market rather than limit order in case it dropped rapidly and passed through my limit without getting filled.

Lastly, if I can trust my Ameritrade chart, it didn't dip under 71.00 until 10:37.


My question was in what I did wrong in entering the order itself -- not to be berated for having done so.

 

I truly appreciate all of the information and insight you offer, but I find this an insulting assumption and I have no idea how you arrived at it.

 

absolutely, martha.

sahtt, thanks for trying, we're here trying to learn. things arent obviously as clear to us as it is apparently to you. but whatever our motivations or experience, youre being an ass.

thanks cthree. the readings that i had done previously did not seem to reflect what you explained tho, i must have been reading it wrong or it just wasnt as in depth. your examples helped a lot.

 

haha, you guys are too sensitive. I'm being honest with you and trying to get a point across, no need to get defensive. The "whole story" wasn't presented to me.

Try to realize that I deal with these kind of questions very often and when you are asking for help you might not just get ice cream with a cherry on top as a response every time.

Notice I have no explanation as to why it was sold unless it went at or under your trigger. As far as I know you did exactly what you were trying to do.

What I was trying to get across is that a lot of people have a tendency to buy a stock at 71.00 and set a sell order at 7.90 so they more or less never have losses. It seems like a good idea but usually results in frequent small losses because of any stocks natural volatility.

If you would have told me the whole situation I would have seen it differently. It looked liked, from your post, that you bought the stock at 71.09 ["when I put the order in"] and then set the sell order at 70.99, just 10 cents below that. Do you see what I mean? I didn't realize you already owned the stock for an extended period of time because you didn't mention that. "that's" how I arrived at it, the way your post was constructed made it appear that you bought it only .10 above your market sell order when I first read your post.

I was just trying to make sure people don't form this habbit, notice I included an "if", as in "if" this is what you are doing please don't as it's a bad habbit. I didn't say you WERE doing it.

The only reasonable explanation is that it did indeed touch the trigger for an instant; this wouldn't surprise me at all. Unless you are looking at a 1-min chart you can't really tell anyways.

I'm never an ass in this forum, but I will often say things that don't sound nice if I think that's the best way to share an idea. The most important rules of investing I know are pretty harsh and usually start with "if you do this, you are screwing up because.."

Perfectly legitimate question though.