My first two days working as a Stock Trader with Horowitz & Company have been exciting. I find that I have more energy at this job, even though I haven’t been getting all that much sleep.
The stock market is action packed, there is so much at stake, and Andrew wasn’t kidding when he said it’s 0 – 120 in 1 minute with him. Over the past two days we have traded about $1.75 million in a day-trading style and have total net profits of $5,500.
Although necessary to be a good investor, it can be difficult to leave the emotion out of it. I found it is easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of the market movements. And of course when this happens, we begin to make poor decisions. Andrew set me up with a computer screen with the live trading program installed so that I can see everything that is happening in real time and make real trades. He would tell me to buy a certain amount at a price, and I would buy, he would tell me to sell and I would sell. The stocks we are trading move quick so there is a pressure to type the price and number of shares and click the “sell” or “buy” button as fast as I can. Hoping that I didn’t make a typo in the process and that I heard Andrew correctly.
At about 1pm yesterday, it was my turn. Andrew allowed me to trade 3000 shares that he purchased earlier in the day. It was completely up to me to decide when to stay in, how much to pull out, and watch the trend of the stock to see where I thought it was going. I watched that stock as if my life depended on it. Trying to figure out where it would go, selling some when I thought it was a good price and holding on when I thought it would rise.
It was pretty intense watching the stock go above our purchase price and then dip below to as much as $0.10. I think I did a pretty good job and made some good decisions. The trades averaged to be up about $0.12 a share to make a total of $300 profits, which was donated by Andrew to The ONE Campaign.
I do enjoy the excitement of the markets, though I am not sure I could handle all the ups and downs on a daily basis. It requires tough nerves, discipline, and the ability to recover quickly after a big loss or a big gain.
Andrew is a great guy and I am learning lots about the market from him. He balances out managing portfolios with a bunch of other things that he is into, such as a weekly podcast, photography, and he just recently finished writing a book called “The Disciplined Investor.”
He talked about our last couple of days in his blog that will give you a more technical idea of what we have been up to.
-Sean