New Platform, New Strategy
By: Timothy Key
Tags: Economics, Life Lessons, Innovation, Finance, Investing

Here is a quick wrap up of the trading week ending December 4 and my plans for this week. I am also switching over to another trading platform, and have made a subtle, but hopefully meaningful, brain shift in philosophy. Keep reading to find out more!

Last week didn’t bring the gains the prior week did. Well, it did, except those came accompanied by offsetting losses. Oops.

Best Buy (BBY) was a total bust. A catalyst-related buy that I thought would pay off on the heels of Black Friday did not go as planned. It was a loser from the start, and I neglected to have a stop loss strategy, so that expired at a $350 loss. Yikes!

Walmart (WMT) also was a bit of a bust, but in that case, it was because I didn’t seize gains when they were there, and instead waited for the security to continue to go up. Guess what? It didn’t.

While I know intellectually that I should have sold when I was ahead, I let emotion take the day and went from modest gain to relatively large loss on WMT.

All the negative was counterbalanced by some significant positive though. I purchased AAPL and saw it rise appreciably, then sold in a timely fashion for a net $355 gain. I also saw modest gains on Ford (F) and Delta Airlines (DAL) that completely fit my expectation profile.

In all three of my gains, I feel like I made the informed decision to buy and sell at the right time, as well as appreciating effectively the motion of the underlying security. Now, if I can just harness that capability and not make dumb moves that erase my gains… ;-)

The bottom line was that I was negative $192 for the December 4 expiry week, but… buys I made later in the week for December 11 (AAPL again at a reasonable strike price) and December 18 (BE) both appreciated on paper to offset the losses. So, while I was down on the specific week, my account balance ended up at $3,115.72 (with cash available of $1,713.72) for an overall 5% gain over the previous week. Yay!

This Week

Right off the bat this morning I sold the outstanding AAPL and BE options, locking in the gains. This is probably a good time to mention my platform change, I am moving my swing trading from Robinhood to E*Trade.

I helped a friend open a basic investing account on E*Trade because he didn’t have anything and was practically paying the bank to keep money in savings. In the process I learned that E*Trade has some advantageous features that are not available on Robinhood (like ability to set a trailing stop loss, for one), so I decided to move my account over.

There are some definite differences, the most major being in the overall aesthetic and ease of use. Robinhood, by far, is simpler and more intuitive to use. Regardless of E*Trade just having more bells and whistles, even the simplest transactions on E*Trade seem complex compared to Robinhood’s “anyone can invest” ease of use and minimalism.

Photo by Dima DallAcqua on Unsplash

I have to say that I am looking forward to some using some features on E*Trade that will make my trading less risky and more profitable, but I don’t regret tackling the steep part of the options trading learning curve on Robinhood. In fact, I would advise most anyone that wants to trade stocks to consider Robinhood as a jumping off point.

If you are starting an “invest and forget it” retirement account I would recommend Vanguard or E*Trade right from the beginning. But, if you want to dabble in single-company stock investment, Robinhood is by far the best place to learn. I can see why they became so popular so rapidly.

I digress, however. I said all of that to preface the comment that the first trade I made on E*Trade was in error. I mistakenly chose the wrong strike price on a purchase of AAPL, and now I am biding my time, hoping Apple rises enough to counter my blunder.

But I am generally getting the hang of it now and believe that for a while I will operate out of both accounts. One advantage of doing so is doubling my ability to make day trades, up to 6 in 5 days across both before causing problems.