Week 4

WEEK 4 MARKET RECAP

This week was a very very bad week in the market for me as I lost lots of money. The main reason I lost a ton of money is because of the stock ASNA (Ascena Retail Group). ASNA is a retail company that was expected to announce positive earnings. I found this stock on the earnings report calendar and saw that they were going to announce their earnings soon. Knowing that, I researched the stock and many analysts predicted that the earnings would be better than last years and therefore the stock will go up. When I bought 11050 shares at $8.05, the stock was going up, but when they actually announced their earnings it was very disappointing and the stock crashed. This resulted in me having to sell the stock at $6.02. I lost a ton of money from this. For the first time I took a MAYJOR lost and it felt terrible, although it wasn't "real money". I fell from 13th place to 70th. I felt as though this was a very good learning experience for me. I was getting very carried away as I was getting lucky with some of the other stocks I bought and put a lot of money into a company I did not know much about. I learned that I can't always trust the analysts online, and that I shouldn't invest in a company or industry I don't know much about. I never heard of this company and decided to try my "luck" with this stock because I was greedy and wanted to get back into the top 10 spot.

Upon losing my money I knew I needed to save myself from my loss and I decided to invest in what Mr.Whalen taught us in class which is called is called an ETF fund. I thought that this would benefit me because I would be investing in a diverse amount of companies instead of just one. DUST was the ETF that I invested in, and they were an ETF for the gold industry. I didn't know much about the gold industry but I started to look for trends on the stock charts. I noticed that it can go high and low really fast, so when I saw that stock was around its low I bought 2078 shares for $30.00 and sold it for $32.00. That profit helped with recovering my losses. I then bought the stock 2141 shares of the stock again for $30.98 and sold it for $32.50. It helped me climb up from 70th place to 59th place. 

Overall this week was a realization for me that the market is not a safe place. I need to be sure before I buy and I need to remember that one mistake can lose me all my money. I made some big mistakes this week and lost all my profits. It was a terrible feeling but I need to earn it back!