Recent Stock Purchases with Scottrade Free Trades
With the stock market as volatile as it can be, I decided to take advantage of stocks’ slump recently to make a few quick bucks. I had a “play account” at Zecco to make speculative stock purchase (sadly, that account is close to nothing right now), but this time I am using Scottrade instead because of all those free trades I have earned.
And again since this is totally speculative, I don’t do any research on what to buy and when to buy or sell. All I want to do is make some quick money, which means I may only hold the stock for a few days. There’s no long-term plan here.
Most of the time, I just went through my list of Chinese ADRs and bought those that were down the most at that time. To fund my purchases, I recently moved $3,000 into my Scottrade account, the first time new money being added to the account in a very long time. Since the end of October when I came back from vacation, I have made these stock purchases with Scottrade:
| Stock | Shares Bought |
Buy Price |
Buy Date |
Shares Sold |
Sell Price |
Sell Date |
| Smith & Wesson Holding (SWHC) | 294 | $1.70 | 10/30/08 | 294 | $2.75 | 11/11/08 |
| VCA Antech (WOOF) | 25 | $19.76 | 11/04/08 | 25 | $15.80 | 11/20/08 |
| ValueClick (VLCK) | 83 | $6.04 | 10/28/08 | N/A* | N/A | N/A |
| E-House Holdings (EJ) | 160 | $5.00 | 11/11/08 | 160 | $6.23 | 12/03/08 |
| E-House Holdings (EJ) | 368 | $4.17 | 11/20/08 | 368 | $6.23 | 12/03/08 |
| WuXi PharmaTech (WX) | 500 | $4.56 | 12/03/08 | 500 | $6.44 | 12/12/08 |
| Hutchison Telecom (HTX) | 360 | $4.27 | 12/04/08 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| JA Solar Holdings (JASO) | 500 | $2.93 | 12/12/08 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Qiao Xing Mobile Comm (QXM) | 620 | $2.81 | 12/12/08 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
*N/A means I am still holding the stock.
As you can see, I bought those stocks when they were “cheap,” which has nothing to do with valuation. And I only sold those shares when I could make profits. If it took a little bit longer for a stock to go up, then I held it until I saw profits.
So far, I have make about $2,200 with the $3,000 I put down (since I didn’t take the profits out, but used them to buy more stocks instead, I may lose all of them). Not a big money, but enough to buy a few Christmas gifts 
Nice set of trades… don’t forget taxes though.
As long as I am making money, I don’t really mind paying taxes. It’s better making money and paying taxes than not paying taxes and not making money