Showing posts with label stops. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stops. Show all posts

January 14, 2011

Stopped out of DISCA

I still like DISCA, but was stopped out of my long position this morning.  So I imagine the logical question is, why did I let myself get stopped out?  Sure, I could have canceled or moved the stop, but I could be wrong about the stock.  Stops are there to protect the downside and limit risk in case I've made a mistake on DISCA.

I still have my Feb 35 call on DISCA, and expect to keep that for now.

January 5, 2011

Natural Gas (UNG)

Mentioned a couple days ago my trade in natural gas, UNG (ETF), had finally moved in my favor, but I stayed away because it had a huge 5%+ day.  Today it pulled back to about 2% above my initial purchase and I went back in for my second buy.  You can see the update on the How I'm Doing page.

I'll discuss stops in more detail in a later post, but on UNG, I had set my stop prior to today at 5.24, slightly below a long term low of 5.27.  Well, now I have more exposure and that's a 14% drop from today's close which is more than I'm willing to risk.  I don't set my stops the same way on each position, but I'll rarely have more than a 10% stop.  There's a recent low (mid-December) at 5.53 so I'm going to move the stop up toward that, which will put me just under 10%.