Day 2: Taking advantage of the battered home building market

Today was pretty successful for me. :)

Here's a review of my transactions:

Sell: PHM 2,000 8.75 17,490.01
Buy: PHM 2,000 8.63 17,269.99

Sell: DHI 1,000 8.75 8,740.01
Buy: DHI 1,000 8.628 8,637.99

Sell: AA 1,000 9.20 9,190.01
Buy: AA 1,000 9.075 9,084.99

Sell: PHM 1,000 8.66 8,650.01
Buy: PHM 1,000 8.545 8,554.99

Also, include one quick trade of BAC for an extra 12 cents, and that was my trading day on the whole.

So,... why, (except for BAC) did I dabble in housing and construction materials on a day the sector was absolutely battered today? Well, I'll tell you!

In the case of PHM and DHI, the choice was obvious. Out of all the stocks in home construction, these two performed worst on the day, and suffered upward to 10% losses at their absolute daily lows.

But look at the balance sheets of these two stocks, especially Pulte (PHM)! The revenue per share of these two stocks are 16 and 21 dollars respectively, and they're both trading under 9? That doesn't make any sense, especially since they're debt totals are fairly manageable. There is absolutely no way I wasn't going to play those for the day, as if it were on any other day except for one where new housing data bad news was released, they'd both be flying, PHM especially.

AA was another obvious choice, because aluminum is a pretty sympathetic sector to construction. It went even lower than my entry point, but it's just such a stable stock that intuition really just took over, and I knew it would eventually get some returns on the day. Additionally, technical analysis indicators show that over the long-term, Alcoa looks strong. It's oversold, and trading over its MACD. There was really very little room to lose, so I gambled, and won!

So on the day, including a quick trade on BAC, I finished up almost 700 dollars.

Also, returning to that post before about PCX. I did make money, but I exited before my target, because I paniced. Big mistake, because I could have held on for at least another half-dollar. Either way, it was a profit. :D

Long Holdings Update:

AFT (added to position).

Work update:

As far as my job search goes... still not so good. I really need to get that letter out to the University of Calgary. I think I'd be a good fit there - but it's so hard to motivate myself to write cover letters when I could be making money, you know... now...