Bryan C. Fleming

Two days ago I wrote about how I was planning on buying stock because the market had a big drop. Well today I’ll show you how it went down and what I learned.

Yesterday at 9:14 am, I logged into my Zecco account to buy my 1 share of IVV (a simple S&P index fund) for $151.55. Zecco said the ask/bid price was $152.34. What’s that mean anyway?

The Bid/Ask price is Zecco’s way of telling what the stock will be at when the market opens. They were telling me the market was going open up higher than the day before.

Well, I didn’t know that the stock market opens at 9:30am. So I was early. I don’t know why, but I thought, “why not buy 2 shares of IVV”. So I put in my order for 151.60 for 2 shares. Here’s what I saw on my zecco screen:

I like to use their Limit order. It means that the most I’ll pay during the day is $151.60 for IVV. There are market orders where you just get the stock for whatever price it’s selling for at that time. I don’t like those.

So I submitted my order and waited for the market to open.

Guess what happened?

The market opened strong. IVV traded at the bid/ask price of $152.34. Looks like I didn’t get my buy. I was a little disappointed.

Around 11:00 am I look at my Google home page (hell you can’t miss it when you open your web-browser) and saw IVV was down to $151.75. I thought “Why not cancel my order and buy IVV for $151.75?”. I logged into Zecco and was very surprised that my order went through:

Amazing. Basically the very second IVV fell to 151.60 I got my 2 shares. I was happy to be an owner of IVV again.

Today the market is down even more. IVV is trading at 150.43. The market is cooling off.

I have $500 in my Zecco account. I can still buy 1 more share of IVV. But, I won’t buy unless the market goes down even further. I’m thinking the high 140’s.

It’s been fun playing the market even with a measly $500. I’m sure learning a lot. A lot of people do what’s called “paper trading”. This is where they pretend to buy and sell stocks to see how well they can do. That sounds like fun, but having some skin in the game (even if it’s a little money) just feels better to me.

Disclaimer: I’m not a professional stock trader, nor do I claim to be. I’m just telling you what I’m doing. I’m not giving investing advice. You can watch along as I loose all my money or make millions. We shall see.

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