Globecomm Systems (GCOM)

Company. Globecomm provides "turnkey satellite network and earth station infrastructure" for telecom and internet systems. (company website)

Buy. At the beginning of November, GCOM jumped from trading in the low $4 range to over $5. I bought after three days of price increases on much higher than average volume.

Three weeks later GCOM made another jump to close above $7.00, again on heavier than average volume. Woo-hoo!

When GCOM fell for three consecutive days after reaching a peak over $7 I was willing to believe the stock was just "resting" before making another push upward. That proved to be a complete misjudgment.

Sell. Last Friday GCOM traded as low as $5.50, the same price that I had paid over a month before. Moreover, after Friday's close, GCOM turned up in in the scan for stocks in a new downtrend. I decided that if the price continued to fall on Monday morning, I would sell.

GCOM price continued to fall this morning. I sold.

I actually toyed with the idea of going short on GCOM, selling more shares than I actually owned in the expectation of being able to buy shares to make up the difference in the future at a lower price. In the end I decided not to; there's something that just doesn't feel right about betting on misfortune.

Maybe I'll change my mind in the future, but for now I'll just make this a fantasy trade to see how it would have played out.