Well said, have you considered you could have just as easily had your first -1G day? Or maybe you've already had a few of those I'm a new trader too and I have been burned trading stocks like this. You can make a lot of money but at the same time you can lose a lot. And as Hydroblunt stated, it's hard to sell after it drops so much because it just has to come back up right? Fortunately for me I was trading very small share lots and had a very low stop loss. Had to get it out of my system before increasing my shares. Even now if I were to trade something as volatile and unpredictable as BIDU (which I wouldn't) I would only go in for about 10 shares and view it as a gamble considering this stock could easily go up or down $10.
The Motley Fool wrote an article the other week about what if they'd just held onto the winners instead of trading after small gains (then they went on to pump their hidden gems service)... Anyways, this thinking is flawed because if he'd always held on to winners, he might be holding onto a company that avg 15% return per year, and then when goog comes along, since he's holding onto that 15% company he has no money to invest in goog. When you look back over your history and if you traded 100 stocks, and 5 did fantastic, its easy to say "i shouda held onto those 5" but the truth is if you had that hold forever mentality you would've probably been holding onto 5 average stocks waiting for them to reach their potential.
Be careful with statements like that. IMO, even though it is obvious that when someone gives advice, they are talking about their own experiences and/or limitations, to say that is true of all others is also equally false. If you had said that 90% of all traders should stay away from BIDU, that would have made what you said almost certainly correct. There are always people out there that see opportunity where you or I only see risk, and seem to come out on the right end of that equation... nitro
Giving advice on message boards has been unhealthy for my financial health. Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'