Happy Thanksgiving to you Gary!
I agree that it can be difficult to grab shares at the price one wants and that allows for immediate profit again after big news hits. One of the cheaper stocks that I did not buy as much as I'd like to have before news hit, but was following was YYY (not the real symbol), it was around $1.30 and had thought about buying. Once the news hit it was above $11 before I had the cash I needed to buy and then I bought more around $9, asa it was coming down. Ultimately they sold it at just above $30 a few months later. I would have loved to have bought the same amount I bought at $9, at $1.30. It would obviously have been many more shares and had a bigger impact.
So if I really like the proposition a company offers, I tend to buy early, and buy low. I rarely follow-up like I did with YYY, but I did decently there, though the difference between that profit and the profit from $1.30 was a big difference. it was not my typical approach, but I was tied down in other stocks mostly at that moment or I'd have gone big in YYY.
On the other hand, many who are day traders, they don't want to risk their capital, at all. That is how, if they make regular gains, it's how they pay their bills. Losing capital means losing the means to make the rent. So many won't invest before news or sell just before news, like we are seeing now, to avoid the binary event. They don't want a binary event. They only want to own after the news and they can trade in and out and take their 20% or 30% and be happy, maybe get 200% or 400% at the end of the day and they are very happy because they took very little actual risk to get it. It is doubtful that such a person even holds to a buyout even a few months after the news. They do not want their money trapped in a company that suddenly drops and then they have to take a loss to keep trading. They are in and out to get just want they need to feel they were a success, and then are on to looking for the next best thing.
In the long-run, their returns are less, in the short-run, it's good enough for them.
Enjoy the holiday!
