Third Week Stock Analysis

This week I reflected back on some of the stocks that I had originally invested in at the beginning of my stock experience. I found that many of these stocks have gone up. For example, I bought GoPro a little less than one month ago at $14.97. I sold the stock September 16th at $13.61. This caused me to lose a significant amount of money, but I was not happy with the fact that the stock had not immediately gone up. Today, the stock has moved up to $17.15. I can now see the benefits of holding onto a stock for a longer period of time, if I stayed in this stock, and many other stocks which have experience a similar scenario, I would currently have gained money overall rather than losing it.

Early in the week, I had decided that it was time to get rid of each stock that I was having difficulty with. Sadly, this decision turned out to be another negative. First Commonwealth Financial Corporation (FCF) was one of these stocks. I had bought it at $10.32 and sold it at $10.05.

As you can see above, FCF has raised from when I had sold it. If I had stayed in the stock longer I would not have lost as much money. 

I have invested in 3M Co, DuPont, D. R. Horton, Thompson Reuters Corporation, and Ultra Gold Miners. Each of these companies are industrial based. As stated in my pervious blog, I have began to do more research about the companies that I invest in before decided to invest in them. Each of these stocks also contained the same types of trends throughout the week. I bought them before their peeks, and once they hit their peak they went through a constant decrease. As aforementioned, I am going to try to stay in the stocks for a longer period of time, while following trying to follow their business plans, in hopes that they will raise over time and create a greater profit for my portfolio. 

The only stock that I am currently making money from in my portfolio is 3M Co. I bought the stock at the appropriate time when it was at a low, and even though it hit it's peak at the beginning of the week, it did not decrease all the way down to the point when I bought it. 

Second Week Stock Analysis

As seen the image below, we can see that to start off the week the market was at a low point, as three of the top companies were at a low. As the week progressed the trends lines wavered a lot, but Nasdaq moved up the highest percentage. 

Nasdaq is shown in blue, the DOW is shown in green, S&P is shown in purple

To try and improve my knowledge for this past week I have focused more on following the trends within the news. I have been trying to decode the wording of the specialists in the stock exchange world, in hopes to find hints leading to greatness. This week I did more research than transactions. The market is more difficult to understand than I first anticipated.

On the transactions that I have made within the past week a made a lot of mistakes. If I had been more patient with the stocks I could have made more money. For example, I sold Western Refining Inc. at $27.15, now the stock has gone up to almost $29.00. I found that I was losing a lot of money and not finding ways to regain that money. Therefore, I was discouraged in the world of stocks.

This coming week I am planning on focusing more on researching stocks, I am also going to be more patient with the trends.

Stepping into the World of Stocks

Previous to starting Mr. Whalen's virtual stock market my knowledge of stocks was very limited. I had heard of people becoming wealthy, and of some of the common stock terms and trends, but I had never paid attention to the deeper facts. Today, my knowledge of the stock market is still very limited. I have been attempting to follow trends and make decisions based on my gut feeling, but I am still very far from the true stock guru skills that Mr. Whalen has.

In attempts to learn more about the stock market, my strategy for the past two weeks has been based on trial and error. I have had few successes, but my errors are the things that have taught me more about which stocks not to invest in rather than which stock to invest in. A fair percentage of the holdings that I have bought and sold have been based off of 'word of mouth' within the classroom. I have never been introduced to the stock market, so therefore I didn't know where to start, or even how to find a decent stock. Few of these investments were successful, while a large amount were unsuccessful.

Specifically, one stock that has been successful is Sunesis Pharmaceuticals. Within the past few days I have been focusing more on the different trends between categorized sectors (e.g. pharmaceuticals, gold, oil, etc.). With Sunesis Pharmaceuticals I was lucky to catch the stock as it was plummeting. I shorted the stock when it was at it's peak just before it moved down about $5.00. This in my opinion was one of my most successful stocks, as it was the only one that I anticipated the change.

Another highly news filling stock that I have been invested in is Apple. With he release of the new iPhone 7, people were not as pleased with the outcome as they had hoped to be. Apple did not 'wow' the public. With the release of the iPhone 7 the stocks dropped drastically, and I followed the trend and shorted 311 shares at $106.92. Following approximately one day, I covered the stocks at $105.87. Although this is not a very large amount of money, I see it as a great lesson basing on tracking stocks.  Looking at the stock today (seen below), I can see that if I had stayed in the stock for a longer period of time, I would have made a greater profit.

Apple Stocks Week of Sept 6th to Sept 8th