A sea of green on my screens
It’s already 4 hours into today’s trading session, and from a social media standpoint, it has been a beautiful day already. On a day that started off as early selling and or profit taking from last week quickly abated and buyers jumped in feet first into a sector that had been beaten to a pulp. My monitor is literally a sea of green (positive trades on the day verses Friday’s close).
I am not talking about barely positive either. Most of the stocks in the group have advanced between 2 to 12 percent. Even the penny and sub-penny stocks in the group are positive. So far, it’s been an invigorating trading session. As I write this post, Groupon (GRPN) is up $1.06 (10.6%) on volume already 80% over daily volume and there is still over two hours left in trading. Obviously traders or investors like what they see in the group as an entity or are hoping to make a quick scalp.
Check out the prices as of 1:40 pm EDT:
Apple (AAPL) $585 + $10.87 (1.9%) – below average volume
Amazon (AMZN) $ 223.10 + $ 4.74 (2.2%) – below average volume
Facebook (FB) $ 31.82 + $ 1.81 (6.0%) – below average volume
Groupon (GRPN) $11.12 + $1.06 (10.6%) – volume 80% above average
LinkedIn (LNKD) $ 106.79 + $4.78 (4.7%) – below average volume
Zynga (ZNGA) $ 5.93 + $.37 (6.6%) – volume 65% above average
Global X Social Media Index ETF (SOCL) $ 13.80 + $.46 (3.47%) – below average volume
Even the social media index ETF – (SOCL) is having a banner day in spite of the European stocks weighing negatively on the index (the Greek issue I mentioned over the weekend).
As a trader, it’s awesome to have days like today. My longs are higher and my shorts are lower. A few sales have triggered as sell objectives have been hit. I often receive comments like ‘wow you sold early’ or why didn’t you hold onto that position? Case in point LinkedIn (LNKD).
As I mentioned over the weekend I do have a position in LNKD shares. I trade this stock quite frequently because of the wild swings it has. I took the majority of my position off the table this morning based on a sale price I had entered last month. Did I leave money on the table – absolutely! Was this a successful trade – absolutely! This is my rationale:
As a trader, I love stocks that make wild swings. Stocks like LNKD allow me to scalp 5% moves up and down – A LOT! It also allows me the opportunity to build a position in the company without any real money on the table. By that I mean that each time I sell shares, I receive the original investment back – the shares in the account are essentially free.
Obviously at some point when companies do well, the stock will take off (such as Apple did) and get outside of a comfortable trading zone, or collapse such as Zynga and Groupon did. Again, as a trader, when I look at a 5% return inside of 3 weeks equates to an 86% annualized return. In any market that is an excellent return – in a market like this that has only appreciated by 2.2% since the beginning of the year, a 5% move is huge and an 86% return is massive.
All in all, an exciting day! Feel free to drop me a line with any questions or comments.
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