The clouds have cleared and the great weight is lifted. The worry is gone and bright days are ahead. I’m not talking about the weather, but my own mentality. What is making me so happy? I finally closed out my largest stock position.
I had gotten into this stock in October/Nov of 2016, should have gotten out in October 2017, and am now finally free of it after seeing substantial gains last week. It’s a bittersweet victory though knowing just how much it’s cost me. I misread the chart in 2016 and went long just as the stock was going into a long-term decline. I spotted the bottom at $0.50, but didn’t have excess funds to put into it and lacked the confidence needed in its success too. It’s rough when you surivive a loss of 60% of your portfolio! At various moments I had an opportunity to get out and take profits, but failed EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. If I had traded this stock properly I could easily have a portfolio in the $300k range. Even now, had I waited three more days as it soared from $2.65 to $3 I would’ve made enough money to pay off all of my non-mortgage loans and have $100k left to work with.
But the past is the past. There is nothing I can do now but take my lesson and make sure never to repeat it! Every time I get enthusiastic about a stock, or feel doubts, I can think about this trade and know what to do in the situation.
Financially speaking, I purchased 44,500 shares of Transenterix (TRXC) at the average value of $1.69 and exited at $2.66, netting a gain of around $44k (or $36k after tax). I plan on pulling out $8k of this to pay off ALL of my personal loan, my credit card debt, and some of my school and family loans. Getting even one of these damn loans off my back will be great stress reliever. That’s $500+ a month that I can keep in my pocket for the rest of my life. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I take out another personal loan withou some consistent, positive cashflow tied to it.
What does this mean for the blog though, besides being a much happier blogger? I will be spending much more time on stock trading than I have been in the past. I’m a big advocate for using stock trading to build capital, and have now made close to $70k in the last three years with this practice. However, I haven’t been able to live up to my words until this point. Every article I posted about how wonderful trading was, every book that I read on the subject, made me die a little on the inside because I wasn’t able to follow the advice and wisdom given and profit from it. Going forwards you’ll see just what can be done with an effective trading strategy and trading mentality – and hopefully be inspired to make some money to boot 🙂
