speaking of Timing the market and in particular, catching a falling knife,
Luck is definitely the most important CSF.
I had a story to share.
Valuebuddies still remember BAL?
Credit:
https://sgx.i3investor.com/blogs/ceomorn...nipula.jsp
I was running a business and get paid in RM and USD. Instead of opening a SME bank account, I make use of my stock brokers to change the foreign currency into SGD. Valuebuddies might recalled that at one point in time, Stock brokers offered the best currency exchange.
At that same point in time, BAL was charging above PE of 100x.
Everyone was sucked into the frenzy - a lot of valuebuddies too.
On the faithful day, SGX halted the trading of BAL.
That was a Friday.
However, during the same weekend, SGX released a "Limited" Trading on BAL.
The SGX announcement caught my attentions for 2 reasons:
1. SGX seldom make announcement over weekend. This new release must caught a lot of trader/investor by surprise (because nobody expect any announcement with serious impact to be made over the weekend) which included me too. But, I was curious to find out more and do some digging.
2. SGX announcement of "Limited" Trading was strange. In the first place, trading was suspended on Friday and now with the announcement, trading is resumed but with some conditions. What sort of conditions would be? The strange conditions really pricked my curiosity and I sense that there might be an opportunity.
Monday, when BAL stock resume with "Limited" trading, the scrips really fall like falling knives - no joke.
I tried to plan an order online and there was an error message - asking me to call my broker.
I called my broker immediately and still trying to key in order thru internet.
After a while, my broker answered my call and explained the reason why I could not buy BAL. Selling is no problem. To buy, you'll need to have cash inside your trading account.
Obviously, at that time, most of the people do not have any $$$ inside their trading account because when you sell a share, the $$$ automatically credit into your bank account.
Immediately, I told my broker that I had $$$ stashed inside my trading account which he seems to be dis-believed.
By that time, the BAL dropped to 9cents and I scooped up everything I could get.
That was still early 9+am.
One hour later, the stock re-bounced to 25cents and I just unload them.
Very very lucky.
When talking about BAL, a lot of valuebuddies were caught and burnt so hard that they swear not to buy any of the penny stocks any more. Do you remember?
Another incident was Y2K, dotcom crash. Same thing, I catch the falling knife (citibank) at USD2 to USD2.5 and sold out within a few days with a small profit.
Mr Oei too make the same killing and he donated all the winning to a charity immediately - Respect.
Timing the market is part and parcel of human instinct.
Without luck, it won't works.
Gratitude!