This morning I put a limit order in to sell all 500 of my newly acquired NDAQ shares. I thought I was pricing my order high enough to let it run up for a few days. Instead, by 3:50 NDAQ was up nearly 12% for the day and I sold my entire NDAQ position at $23.40 and received $11,689.94 after commissions. NDAQ made it up to $24.00 in the next few minutes following that trade and then closed the day off the top of the highs at $23.82.
$23.96 was the high a couple of weeks ago so I expected this range to be the high before a pull back. I also drew a trend line that came in closer to $23.50. That’s how I picked my exit price. Obviously I could have done better, so I’ll be really curious to see how it plays out over the next few days. 12% in a single day is huge, so maybe we’ll get another pull back and I can sell some naked puts on it to make some more money on it over the next month. In essence, this was a day trade. I bought the shares this morning from my option assignment at $22.50 and paid $11,269.99 after commissions. That gave me a one day profit of $419.95 and $802.45 with the option premiums included.
I’m not sure how I’m going to play NDAQ next. If it breaks above $24.00 and closes above for a couple of days I’ll consider that old trading channel broken. If it comes back down, I’ll wait until it gets closer to the low end of the current trading channel and get back in with a more bullish play and smaller hedge.