Missed out on doubling my money by a few minutes

[jmjj215]

So I bought SMD back in May b/c this fund manager had bought it at $3 per share and said he was "convinced it is still a bargain." At that time it was selilng for $.33 a share so I though, well, if this guy thinks it was a bargain at 10x the price, I'll buy.

So I bought $180 worth or some small amount like that (500 shares).

Yesterday I get back from lunch and have an alert from Scottrade that it hit my alert mark of $.66 (it has pretty much stayed in the neighborhood of $.30-$.33 since I bought it).

I look it up on Yahoo and it's at $.79.

I had forgotten my Scottrade acct # so I had to call them and then I got access and put in an order but it didn't fly. It was back down to $.32

My mistake was setting an alert instead of a limit order that never expires. Now if that sucker hits $.66 while I'm gone it'll sell. I still have no idea why it spiked.

Missed out on probably $150 My wife was bummed as well.

The spike

[LuxLiving]

Sorry you missed out but isn't it great to learn this now with a relatively small amount of money? You'll get 'em next time, eh?

[JBinKC]

Yeah thats a bummer especially when I think the company is really speculative now. I used to own SMD in its heyday when it had nice earnings momentum and doubled my money on it in a short period of time around 5 years ago. However, I realized this stock was not a long term keeper given its product is very faddish. Hopefully you will be given another opportunity because the company's balance sheet looks pretty dicey to me.

[greedy4chips]

I used to daytrade or swing trade stocks and would look for stocks that did what yours did on a regular basis. K-tel (not sure if it trades anymore) would sit between $2.80 and $3.00 for 2-3 months and then spike to $8 -$12 in minutes and fall back just as fast. No one ever figured out why the big run up, but we did learn as to why it fell so fast. The people would sell into the rally very fast and even short sell knowing full well the stock would plummet fast. I only made money on it 1 time before it never did it again, but did see trader's images posted of their transactions showing multiple huge profits (10's of thousands).

[brianpalmer]

sorry you missed the opportunity. however, it was just for a small amount, so take it as a learning experience!

[fake_usa]

well atleast you didn't lose anything... like a lot of people have in the past..

including me : (

[jmjj215]

It was probably worth the entertainment factor