Sell Stop:(HMIN), New Buy:(RINO)

Last Thursday I stopped out of (HMIN) by just 3 cents for a 5% loss. The stock has since recovered nicely but that's all part of the deal. In fact, I'd rather see a stock move back up after I stop out because that's a sign of overall market health. The main thing that I still need to evaluate is my stop loss choices, I just don't have much tolerance for taking an 8% loss but I need to make sure this isn't costing me more in the long run.

Today I bought (RINO), a stock which I've watch make a monster run for the past few months. The company's latest earnings qualified it for my basic fundamental criteria and the technicals still look great so I went ahead and bought it at $27.40. This buy point is 10 cents above the previous high off a pullback to the 10 wk moving average. In this very brief correction we've just had, most of the buy points I've seen are leading stocks that pulled back to the 10 week line over a span of three to five weeks. Not an ideal setup but I'll try to take what the market gives me.

This rally has been a bit sketchy but today it finally saw a nice up day on higher volume than the day before. Having said that, volume was still well below average so a cautious approach continues to make sense. In fact, that's why I waited a couple of days before making another buy once I stopped out of (HMIN) - it's worth letting a couple winners go by to make sure I'm not over trading like I used to.