Stock Traders Blog

I paid 180 dollars of commission today. As you know I am using TDAmeritrade. Its stock trading commission is $10 per transaction. How did I get to that far? Well I thought trading option is also $10 per transaction. So I bought 100 contracts of Microsoft Jul 24 Call option at 0.32 per share and sold them at 0.36 or 0.37 per share. I thought I was able to net about $400 on that transaction. In fact I was only able to make about $230 on that.

MSFT option commission

It turns out that there is $0.75 commission per contract in addition to the 10 dollar transaction fee. I was trading 100 contracts so there was $150 extra commission in addition to the $10 transaction fee. That is a lot and that is something I didn’t know before I did this trade. It was lucky that I was still able to make money. A lesson learned from this is when dealing with option it is better to trading those options that prices are high. If you know any broker that offer low commission on option trading please let me know

It is a big down day. Unemployment number is not good. But my account was up thanks to the option trade. I am still holding 500 shares of Beat that I bought yesterday and at the end of the day I added 500 shares of USB (US Bank) at $17.13. I became more willing to take the long side. But I wish I shorted Bank of America this morning.

Acount Balance 20090702

Account Balance Changes: +$114.81

PS
I have to revise the gain today to +$94.81. Closing price of USB came in a bit late and it turns out to be 17.04 instead of 17.08.

Weird title isn’t it? Today I traded a stock called CardioNet Inc. Its stock ticker is “Beat”. Its stock price got beaten up today dropping more than 40% because of lower earning forecast. I got in at $9.59 and sold it at $9.90. Close to the end of the trading day I got in again at $9.60 so I am holding 500 shares of Beat right now.

In its yahoo profile it says that CardioNet, Inc. provides ambulatory, continuous, real-time outpatient management solutions for monitoring relevant and timely clinical information regarding an individual’s health in the United States. I have no idea what kind of business that is about. I did check on its financial statement and this company had a problem managing its ever increasing receivable and cash out flow. It is very suspected when receivable grows faster then sales but I was tempted by its 40% drop. Hopefully it will be up a bit tomorrow.

account balance 20090701

My account is up about $100 today. Dropping 40% in a single day seems a lot to me especially for a stock that has never traded that low. I am hopping it will bounce back above $10 in a couple days.


Account Balance Changes: +$109.93