2008 Stock Trades

I traded more stocks in 2008 than all I did in the past few years. Not that I suddenly became an active trader or anything like that. In fact, I have long been a buy and hold type of investor and I still am. Sometime, I felt that I may have been too buy-and-hold with some stocks that I had no intention of holding for long when I bought them, as you can see shortly.

Anyway, there are two reasons that I traded more last year than usual. First, I set up a play account at Zecco early in the year so I can use a small amount of money to play a little bit, with the only goal to make a few quick bucks. Why I went to Zecco? Because of the commission free trades it offers (check out my Zecco review for more about the broker if you are not familiar with it). It doesn’t make sense to pay a $5 or $7 mission if I only want to buy $100 worth of stocks. Unfortunately, my effort on the play money, which I got by referring people to Zecco, was a failure. I bought some stocks with Zecco account in the first half of the year, but the stock market took a nose dive in the since the summer.

Then starting in the fall, I switched to Scottrade after earning some free trades from Scottrade and have been using it to play again for the past two months. But with Scottrade, I had to fund the account with some new money ($3,000 to be exact). As you can see from the following table, after the sharp decline of stocks  in October and November, my trading volumes went up a lot, along with my luck.

Remember, I don’t do any research with what I called “play money” so there weren’t a lot of reasons why I want to buy a particular stocks. All I want is making some quick money. And it seems that I succeed in some sense after buying a few beaten down stocks in November. When I sold 500 shares of JASO on December 31, 2008, the $3,000 that I put into my account early has earned me $3,000 profits (you can find my published results here). Unlike what I did with Zecco account, I held those stocks in my Scottrade account much shorter and took profits when I was happy. From what I can see, there were opportunities in the stock markets after months of heavy selling.

I am not sure whether I will trade as much in 2009 or not because November 20, 2008 seems to be the bottom for the stock markets. If stocks indeed recover this year, it may be a good time to buy and hold again