The past does hurt...

I should have learned how day trading works and how trading equities operate before I made my purchase of "C". Now for my continuation after my first buy/sell equity.

On the same day I sold "C" I immediately used the proceeds to purchase Sallie Mae "SLM" at $17.847/share for 1000 shares. In two hours I sold the shares at $19.17/share for a total profit off +1323 excluding commissions and fees.

Thinking I just made my first gains with such ease and swiftness I decided to trade other stocks on the same day. Little did I know I had violated many of the fundamental rules of the stock exchange.

Mistake 1) I purchased "C" with cash and when I sold it, I did not know that my proceeds would not be in my account balance until after three business days with starting date being when I sold the equity. My mistake was that I initiated another trade on the same day with the same proceeds. You can not do that and I was notified with a violation letter.

Mistake 2) I further incurred two more violations because for the next three trading sessions I was trading in and out of equities with the same amount of cash. My account was then listed with a restriction for 90 days from trading.

My heart just sank. After three sessions of trade I never was notified, online, that I was breaking any rules or regulations. I only found out when I opened the first violation letter three days after I made the violations. A glimmer of hope poke through when I learned about Margins after speaking to one of my brokerage representatives.

This is to much to bear because it was just too painful to recount about all the dumb mistakes I made financially. Yet by blogging I can remind myself and others what NOT to do in stock trading. I will elaborate on Margins in next post.