Though I am not “trading” today, I sold some stocks – in real life too. As I mentioned in this post, I had been holding on to NEXM for about a month. Recently, I decided I was going to cash out the next time it bounced up a couple cents aiming for a small profit. There was an earnings conference call yesterday and to me, it seemed liked the upside timeline for this stock was going to be longer than I originally throught. However, today my Stop Limit orders were triggered. I had set them for .108 or so – but the price never got to that point.
.11 cents is critical as this has been a very well tested support for this stock that hasn’t been broken recently. So my shares were sold at .1101, giving me a couple hundred loss, and making me down $612 total now in real dollars. It would of been much better to exit at .14 or better, and this stock will likely go up to there within the next week if it follows its pattern.
LESSON: At least with my broker (TD Ameritade), stop sale orders are triggered by the the highest bid, not by an actual trade price. Since there were bids at .102 this morning, my orders were executed. There appears to be more specific trade triggers I can use at TD Ameritrade to give myself more control over stop sales that I will have to look into.
