No harm, no foul, but no money either
Oct. 31st, 2007 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captpackratThe Fed went with a 25 point cut, which was pretty much what the market was expecting. What they weren't expecting was that it wasn't a unanimous decision, one board member voted against the rate cut. This, along with news of possible renewed inflation, sent the market into a tailspin for a half hour or so.
Unfortunately, I had an appointment at 2:00, 45 minutes after the Fed announcement, so I couldn't sit there all afternoon and monitor my stocks. I'd purchased my shares of UYG at $54.50 a couple days ago and just before the announcement it had reached $55.46, a tidy little 1.8% increase. Alas, after the Fed announcement, it crashed down to $53.46, a loss of about 1.9%. I didn't want to sell at a loss, and I knew I wouldn't get home before the market closed, so I placed a limit sell order with a target of $54.55, which would basically pay for the commission fees, then got in my car and drove off.
As I pulled into town, I remembered Sirius offers the audio portion of CNBC, so I tuned to it. The market had gone from being in the hole to being up 170 points! I started kicking myself because I knew that it was too late to cancel my sell order; it would have gone through long before I could reach a place with a computer. I was certain I'd missed out on thousands of dollars that I could have made had I issued a market-on-close sell order instead.
First thing I did when I got home was check the stock prices. I was soooo relieved when I saw that the closing price was only $55.01, only 46 cents more than I'd sold it for. It turned out I had been beating myself up all afternoon over just a few hundred dollars.
At least my other ETFs and mutual funds (mostly foreign) did exceptionally well.
Unfortunately, I had an appointment at 2:00, 45 minutes after the Fed announcement, so I couldn't sit there all afternoon and monitor my stocks. I'd purchased my shares of UYG at $54.50 a couple days ago and just before the announcement it had reached $55.46, a tidy little 1.8% increase. Alas, after the Fed announcement, it crashed down to $53.46, a loss of about 1.9%. I didn't want to sell at a loss, and I knew I wouldn't get home before the market closed, so I placed a limit sell order with a target of $54.55, which would basically pay for the commission fees, then got in my car and drove off.
As I pulled into town, I remembered Sirius offers the audio portion of CNBC, so I tuned to it. The market had gone from being in the hole to being up 170 points! I started kicking myself because I knew that it was too late to cancel my sell order; it would have gone through long before I could reach a place with a computer. I was certain I'd missed out on thousands of dollars that I could have made had I issued a market-on-close sell order instead.
First thing I did when I got home was check the stock prices. I was soooo relieved when I saw that the closing price was only $55.01, only 46 cents more than I'd sold it for. It turned out I had been beating myself up all afternoon over just a few hundred dollars.
At least my other ETFs and mutual funds (mostly foreign) did exceptionally well.
