Oil embargo! I'm done trading oil stocks! Totally kidding. But those three oil-related stocks just came in tried to rain on my parade. I took losses on all three and I don't mind seeing them gone from my portfolio.
For two of them, their price at the open today was actually below my stoploss. My stoploss got filled (since I use a "market" stop order), but at a lower price than I originally specified. That's one of the risks of swing trading: overnight gaps. Even though I set a stoploss to be around 1% of my account value for stocks, the price can gap down below that on any given night and give me a bigger loss, as it did with those two. I ended up with a 1.1% account reduction on one and a 1.2% account reduction on the other, but they can be greater than that at times. It also goes the other way, and in back tests, some of the greatest victories were gap ups that happened overnight.
I picked up a couple more stocks this morning. And I know at least one other one triggered (JCI) that I would have gladly bought too, but I only typically buy two stocks per day as a way of managing my buying power and diversifying market risk. If anyone bought JCI from the watch list, that might prove to be a great call. It has a great track record of success with this trade setup historically.
If you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you.