I'm not sure how much the overall market slid but I got owned pretty hard. Lost about 25% from the high water mark. If I had a do over I could have made a substantial amount of money, unfortunately I was 100% invested and unable to commit more funds.

On to the trades...

I bought a very small position in FLL, a company that runs indian casinos. I sold out losing 10% because I found a better value. FLL has since rebounded to my purchase price +8% and I might look at it again someday if it drops.

Besides that my only sale was my main holding VIFL. I sold at $6 (after buying at $5) and was very happy to see it drop to $4.65. I almost sold everything I owned to rebuy it but decided to wait it out for a few reasons a) VIFL is a little hard to get in and out of due to the size of the company, b) the other stocks I held we also in the process of rebounding and it was impossible to say what would go of first, c) I tend to shy away from moving my money around a lot because of the negative feelings I have regarding such short term trades. Needless to say VIFL has gone up about 40% in the last week from the lows I could have bought at.

Another huge error was not getting pre approved for unsecured options. I deposited 1K to buy GTAT calls when then stock was $10 per share with a strike price of $11. I think the options were $0.40 or something with the date you have to exorcise 9 months out (I'm not positive though). TBH I'm not even all that sure how options work, I just knew it meant leverage, and lots of it. Unfortunately my brokerage denied my application to trade unsecured options and GTAT has since risen back to $12.27. I think that means I would have done quite well and would still have about 8 months to watch the stock go up, which I feel it will. I also briefly looked at getting NEOP options when it was $1.60 although I;m not sure I could have pulled the trigger even if my brokerage let me... NEOP is now at $3.24 and still rising.

The main lesson I learned is you need to have cash sitting, waiting for stuff like that to happen. It would have had a significant impact on my results if I had 25% of my cash free.

Currently I own two stocks only.

GTAT is about 65% of my portfolio. I bought it around $12.50 and I'm only down about 10% on it now. I sent emails to my friends and family telling them to buy it but I don't think anyone listened to me. I still believe it to be free money and urge any friends or family members reading this to buy some.

NEOP makes up the remainder of my portfolio. The complete story of my NEOP holdings is me buying a bunch between $3-$4 and selling it at $5.50. Then NEOP started to get hammered and it dropped. I started buying again around $3.6 and kept buying as it dropped till I was out of money, at around $3.30 or something. FML for not realizing it could go so low and missing an even greater opportunity. I'm down just about 13% on NEOP (excluding the previous profit from it) but that shouldn't last long. I hope to see it hit $4.00 by the end of September and if (when!) the FDA approves the NDA (new drug application) it will go even higher.

If Lymphoseek is approved for use by the FDA the price should rise to somewhere between $6-$7. After reading through all the material on the phase 3 testing and following the stock closely over the last 6 months or so I expect the FDA to approve it about 80 times out of 100 )80% of the time). If you remove stupidity and hidden agendas from the equation I would expect an approval nearly 100% of the time.

Now I will attempt to do math, this could get painful so feel free to skip it (if you even got this far). I'm going to use $3.25 as the buy price I calculate off to make it easier. The actual price is $3.24 and my personal purchase price ranged from $3.30-$3.60 as I mentioned earlier.

80% of the time the stock will go to $6.00-$7.00. To help me with math I will use $6.50 as the target price if Lymphoseek is approved and goes to market.

80% of the time I double my money. 3.25 x 2 = 6.50

20% of the time I lose almost everything. 3.25 x oh shit = fml

So on a hypothetical 10K investment I would expect to earn $8,000 profit or 80% if they let me run it 100 times. In addition to that, while the stock will sharply tumble if the drug is not approved, I will likely be able to exit with some small amount of capital. It would not be a 100% loss.

I'm not sure if the above is correct so forgive me if it's not. I have a sneaking suspicion it might be 60% expected return for some reason, but idk, either way I'm fine with it.

I strongly discourage people from reading this and taking my advice, especially on NEOP. I am not a doctor and don't work for the FDA. I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass and I'm not even sure I did the simplest of math correctly. And while it will be awesome to make 80%, I don't think many people reading this have the stomach to lose the same percentage, even if the loss occurs a much smaller percentage of the time.

There is a guy on 2p2, DesertCat, who has a question and answer thread that is very, very informative. An excellent read for wannabe value investors.

EDIT: I should also add I bought some FTP money at $.68 and that's now worth about $.25 if I had to guess. Should have waited on that one too!