Pallian Creative

How I lost $500 When I Ignored Timothy Sykes’s Trading Rules

About a month ago, in THIS blog post, I proudly announced that I was going to start trading. After all, it only made sense - I read and moderate all of Tim’s blog posts and alerts, and I should by now have a good understanding on how the market works and when to buy and sell. Or at least that is what I thought.

About a week ago, I bought a certain Uranium stock called URRE. I bought it because 1) there was talk of a takeover by a bigger firm, 2) the stock was still reasonably priced for a company that had over $7 billion worth of the radioactive mineral and 3) I wanted to gamble. Now if you ever read any of TIM’s blogs - the first thing he mentions is to ignore all 3 of the above points. He focuses on charts - and not the company. He doesn’t care if there’s going to be a takeover or if the company is legit or shady - if he sees a chart pattern that is sure to be a winner, he trades or shorts.

Unfortunately for me, I decided not to look at the chart and decided to go with my instincts - here was a NASDAQ listed Uranium company that was cheaply priced and had some good chance of going back to it’s glory days of $12/share. Well, I was wrong. Today, after holding this stock for a week, I finally sold. Took a loss of approx. $500 as well. Here is what you can do to not lose money like this:

1. Keep emotions at bay - when you trade, look at chart patterns and learn how to read them. Forget message boards, and news headlines and shady stock promoter advices. Understand the chart - and when you do, don’t let your emotions come in play. Don’t think that tomorrow the price will go higher. It won’t.

2. Buy a book or a DVD that teaches you how to look at charts and understand them.

3. Do not gamble. Take calculated risks that are 75% guaranteed to make you money. Subscribe to TIMAlerts and follow the advice - if Tim says do not touch this stock, then do not touch that stock.

So where do I go from here? Well, for one, I only trade stocks listed on the TIMAlerts and I’m slowly understanding how to read chart patterns. It takes a while, but it can be done. I’m also no longer looking at small scalping plays. And slowly but surely, I’m becoming a little more disciplined.