I just sold 1700 shares of oil stock MEMP for a 10% profit in just 5 weeks. I bought the shares on February 4th for $35,323 and sold them on March 10th for $38,855. My realized gain was $3532. That is a 10% profit in 5 weeks -- which is equivalent to a 100% annual profit. This was an excellent example of how my stock price setting strategy works. And here are the details.*

How I decide which stocks to buy I have outlined in my post "A 16% Stock Profit in 6 Months"** and explained in detail on my blog page "How I Invest in Stocks".*** But the profit I made on this stock sale was a function of the limit price I set for the buy. Because one doesn't just have to pick "good" stocks; one also has to pick "good" stock prices. Here is how I did that this time.

On January 31st, MEMP closed at $21.93 per share. That presented a very good opportunity because MEMP's price chart showed strong buying support at $19.50. When I added MEMP's yearly $2.20 dividend to that $19.50 support price, it gave a "safe" buy price of $21.70. (See my blog page "How I Invest in Stocks"*** for the reasoning.) And MEMP's January 31st price was just 1% above that!

So I put in my buy order on February 3rd at a buy price of $20.77, to allow some room for the price to drop due to a quarterly dividend expiring on February 4th. That next day, I caught the stock as its price predictably dropped. In the following 3 days, MEMP's price slumped to $20.43 but held above its 200-day moving average line. And sure enough, MEMP's price started moving up after that. Which set the stage for me to take a 10% "yearly dividend in advance" profit a short time later. (See my blog page "How I Invest in Stocks"*** for that reasoning.)