Over all I took a quite a bath.

Stock went down in early trading. I was too busy at work to watch. It was down about $0.46 before I had a chance to check. I sold ASAP at $27.23 and a -8.0354% loss on this trade.

A few things that went wrong:

Bought at 29.16 on a market order with no limit on Monday (1^st mistake)

I did that because once I missed a good trade BECAUSE of a limit order that was too restrictive. I suppose I went to the opposite extreme.

I could not sell till next day because of my account type. (Circumstances, not an excuse)

Should have had a stop loss for Today but did not. (Amplified my loss - 2^nd mistake)

            That was just plain stupid. (For some reason, I was just too busy.)

Questions:

Why did AA go down while rest of market went up yesterday? Partly because it gaped up but did not stay. Maybe it did not stay because profit takers guessed it would drift to close the gap - I suppose.

A limit order would have prevented purchasing at too high a price

Why didn't it go back up some today? I had hoped on a small bounce up to get out on.

Lesson:

Better to miss a trade that might make money because too restrictive of a limit order than to loose money by buying too high without one. Use limits and stops.

Anyone got any other ideas on what went wrong? I'd be glad to hear from

I got an idea what went wrong:

The trade on 9/5 looked ominous to me from a chart perspective. MACD ad just rolled over on you, and the trader MMA's (Short-terms) were below the Investors MMA's (intermediate terms). If you are looking to run with trending stocks, you might want to read up on Guppy MMA (Google it. Well worth it). Also, ADX helps with identifying if the stock is trending, but not which direction. Using those three, you can avoid alot of mistakes and up your win ratio.

Another thing is that if you are a firm fundamentalist - that is, buying stocks on their financials, then a 6-day trade is counterintuitive. You should be holding long, and always protect yourself with limits and stops.

My 2c.

I'm more prone to technicals myself.