Qualcomm

QCOM

Company. Qualcomm "known throughout the wireless industry by pioneering and commercializing CDMA wireless technology [used by Verizon Wireless], is now leading the world in the development of CDMA2000 (1X and 1x EV-DO) and WCDMA (UMTS) — the two most widely accepted International Telecommunications Union-approved 3G standards." (company website)

Buy. This is the second lot of Qualcomm I have sold this quarter. The first was sold on 6-Apr-04 for a modest profit (3%).

I bought this lot in late March after QCOM had retreated from a peak at $65. Six days later, it soared to another new high above $69. I should have sold then, but I didn't.

Sell. Qualcomm has climbed sharply over the past three weeks, and I began to think about taking profits. (My motivation for doing so was reinforced by the knowledge that the second estimated tax payment is due next week.)

Ameritrade is rolling out its new website, and one of the features on the new site is called trade triggers. These let you define a condition based on about a dozen different market variables and specify an action to be taken when the condition is met: send you an email and/or submit an order. This offers much more flexibility than a normal stop-limit order or a trailing stop, which, on the Nasdaq, are controlled by the bid price rather than the last trade price. In the past I've been frustrated by these orders executing unpredictably because of the varying spread between the current bid and the current offer prices. So— I set a trade trigger for QCOM based on price of the last trade in comparison to the previous day's close. It fired this morning, resulting in the sale.

Because the QCOM share price was so high when I bought, I was limited to a small number of shares. Nevertheless, a profit of more than $6 per share "ain't half bad" as my momma used to say.