Online stock trading has made my life so much easier, especially in dealing with the crises that has been going on for the last couple of weeks. I’m not a day trader or anything like that, but it did give me reassurance to be able to access my holdings and see what they were doing.

I am not a day trader, as I said, because I think that there are a very few who can make money consistently being one. That was never my goal.

However, my goal in online stock trading is to be more active and to take advantage of buying and selling opportunities.

These last two weeks have been a nightmare and an education.  I had been more of a “buy and hold” type of guy, but saw my attitude change when the market was tanking. It occurred to me, that in many of my holdings, I had not paid attention to that old stock trading adage: You will never go broke taking profits.

I hadn’t taken enough in the way of profits, and was determined to change that. Because many of the stocks I had had for many years had climbed tremendously I was in good shape to sell even into the downturn and still have a lot of profit room.

I did so on several of my old long term holdings. I wasn’t sorry to sell, either, even if a rally comes on Monday.

If a rally comes, I’ll take the cash and put it into some stocks I have in mind. I spent the entire weekend researching various sectors and will buy into some companies, including bank and financial companies that have a good P/E ratio, are good buys and that have a good chance for a strong recovery.

Another thing I promise I will do is to hedge my bets more. I want to protect my long term stock positions, and I think I have to pay more attention to keeping them in good positions by looking more closely at the put and call situations.

This market has not scared me off; rather, it’s made me from a pretty conservative investor to one who is more involved. It just makes sense.

A few of my friends last week threw in the towel.  They sold most of their holdings and flipped their 401(k) holdings into money markets funds. I guess I might do the same thing if I had seen a thirty or forty percent decline.

I guess we all learn from our mistakes. I only hope that when the governments of the world get through with “fixing” the markets there will be something left to trade.