Investing 102

[pw2006]

Trying to time the market is nearly impossible. As Greg mentioned in an earlier post, there is some dude somewhere watching to see if you you are a buyer or a seller. As soon as you make your move, that dude calls his buddies and moves the stock in the opposite direction. They attacked me twice today!

Earlier this week I decided to reduce a little risk in my portfolio and decided to sell ~50% of one of my speculative position and put that money into a something with less volatility. I wasn't trying to time anything, but ran into some bad timing. That dude was watching me!

One of my speculative positions is in a small, thinly traded biotech (FOLD). I've owned it for a couple years with an average cost of around $5.50. It has been trading between $2.10~$4 for the past few months with lots of volatility. So I sold ~1/2 my FOLD position for ~$3.55 and added to my Chevron (CVX) position.

After the market closed yesterday, Chevron pre-announced they were going to miss their earnings and the stock traded down nearly 2.5% today. And as if that wasn't bad enough, FOLD jumped 30% today and ended the day at $4.54! As I mentioned, I wasn't trying to time anything, just bad timing.