49% Loss

So, I had a 49% loss today.

Palantir (PLTR) and Simon Prop Group (SPG) did the opposite of what I expected today. PLTR was the biggest contribution to yesterday's profit, and today as it plummeted by $11, was also the main cause of my 49% loss.

What happened? While everything pointed towards a continued uptrend, the technology sector suffered a loss. Part of this is because of the announcement from IBM. The general public and investors are anxious about AI growth and impact, this was then a ripple effect in the entire sector.

PLTR

In the above, I kept the yellow dotted line where the trend was observed. Keep in mind, I considered this stock on April 21. However, looking back at it, it seems that the best place to have identified and entered a call contract was April 15. In reality a good entry would've been on April 15. The volume was around 53M today, it was an aggressive trading day, where the sellers did control the narrative.

Now, I am not saying that the news didn't make everyone apprehensive. The opposite, the news caused all the flushing. So, while the indicators told me yesterday there was room for another bullish day, the news had a different plan.

Let' move to SPG

The downtrend has shifted and had a reversion, while the gap up is not significant for the stock itself, it is significant for options.

I do think we are early on this trend, but the real estate sector had a good recovery today either way. While the impact of this small gap up wasn't huge on my bank, it was still smart to exit when I did.

Thoughts

It's my first major loss, I was a bit more annoyed than hurt really. I think I was annoyed because I think sellers were forcing the price down. I do want to admit though that I didn't set my usual 25% stop loss, if I had, I'd probably would've had a smaller loss overall today. It is a mistake on my part.

Part of me wondered if I got too greedy with this one today, but also know that if the IBM news hadn't dropped, then PLTR would've gapped up a bit more today. So while I still believe in my method, I think I have to consider where to enter, not too late to the party.

Part of the reason I wasn't too mad was because I know I can recover what I just lost. I keep referring to these entries as waves, and if we stick to it, then we know the market doesn't really care if you fall off your board, there are several waves coming, and not every one will be executed perfectly. I had already decided not to trade tomorrow, and I am sticking to that. I will find an early wave, or a couple of them tomorrow and later monitor its behavior over the weekend. At the same time, the stop loss must be set in place when entering the contracts.

I also didn't want to enter any contracts today because I know I would've done so with my emotions and it would've been revenge trading, which I finally let go of some time in February.

Next week should be exciting, in the meantime tomorrow I will be taking a break from watching the stock market during the day.