Capstone Turkey

When I re-bought Capstone Turbine (CPST) back in April, I feared it was going to be a buy high, sell low story.

On Monday CPST missed yet another quarter's earnings, and I decided to bail this morning at $2.35.

Today the market celebrated the company's inability to manufacture its primary product growing backlog of orders for its microturbines, to close at $2.73, a gain of 16% from where I sold earlier in the day. This, even though manufacturing costs increased significantly. So how is Capstone going to ever meet demand? Won't prospective customers just buy someone else's microturbines? Will they ever be profitable?

Bygones.

So, to recap my entire CPST trading history:
2/23/07 - bought at $1.05
2/28/07 - bought at $0.90
1/8/08 - high of $1.92
1/22/08 - exited at $1.20
4/15/08 - bought at $2.65
6/23/08 - high of $4.42
8/12/08 - exited at $2.35

There's an incredible lack of vigilance/discipline/strategy being demonstrated above. I've had similar experiences in other small-cap stocks as well, and have therefore concluded that I don't have what it takes to trade them...because I don't want to be a trader. I'm all-too-willing to hold on to a stock that, for example, has nearly doubled in two months time, because I'm more afraid to sell a winner "early" than to see that winner turn into a loser.

What I really should have been afraid of is applying long-term investment ideas to short-term trading vehicles such as CPST.