It finally happened. After two long months Baytex Energy finally stretched back up to my break even point around $1.44 per share. And thus, I sold!
Unfortunately for me, I fell slightly short of breaking even due to Robinhood’s revenue generating method of routing trades to behind-the-scenes parties instead of posting them on the public exchange. According to Robinhood’s SEC filing, they use Citadel Securities, Two Sigma, Wolverine, and Virtu to perform this work, and Robinhood makes over 40% of their revenue using this approach.
When I saw BTE hit $1.44 this morning, I placed a limit order to sell. Though the volume continued to increase and price hovered between $1.43 and $1.45, my sell order never filled. I canceled the order and resubmitted a sell order at $1.43. Again, it would not fill. Out of fear of missing my opportunity to get out around $1.44, I decided to submit a pair of market orders for 100 shares each and just see what I could get. Those orders filled for $1.41 and $1.42.
Quite frankly, I should never have bought these shares. I ran across the company when doing some research on Robinhood back in early July. I had a theory that I wanted to test after seeing a number of stocks hit some fairly sizable returns after first showing up on the “New to Robinhood” filter.
Baytex had been on a significant downward trend since dropping from its heights trading around $60 in 2011. In 2016, it dropped below $2 per share and has bounced between $1 and $5 ever since.
I had seen a few low-cost stocks hit fairly quick upswings between 5 and 10% after first appearing on the “new” filter, so when I saw Baytex Engery appear after their steady decline I thought, “this could be my chance!”
I bought in at $1.44 per share for 200 shares on July 10th. Only July 30th, it had run up $1.56 (a gain of 8%) before quickly dropping back below my break even point over the following days. I kicked myself for being greedy and missing my target, so I held on to the shares hoping they would bounce again and give me an opportunity to sell.
Ultimately, I knew nothing about the company, its leadership, and next to nothing about the industry in which they operate. It was a stupid buy, and I’m glad I was able to get out right around where I bought in.
Today’s Positions
- Canopy Growth Corp. (CGC): 40 shares @ $27.23 (-1.55%)
- YETI Holdings, Inc. (YETI): 10 shares @ $28.89 (-4.81%)
- Baytex Energy Corporation (BTE): SOLD, net loss of $5.
- Microsoft Corp. (MSFT): 1 share @ $137.52 (-1.14%)
Overall, my account value is now at $1,849, sitting on $333 in cash. Most of the market appeared fairly flat today. SPY finished up 0.05%. Yeti had a rough day today down almost 5%.
But holy cow, Tailored Brands (TLRD) had a monster day finishing up over 12%! This past month they are up almost 25%. Their earning is coming up later this week (after hours on Wednesday, 9/11). So we’ll see where they go from here.
FNMNY 