investing

This Friday I made almost $150 on the stock market. And that was locked in by selling the stocks (at almost a 10% premium). While we can never predict long term performance, the short term has been pretty good. My strategy is simple enough: I take a volatile stock that is trading near a low point and has dropped recently for reasons other than bad earnings (executive left, regulatory rejection, oil prices, etc) and I buy it if I believe it can gain at least 5% in the short term. I always buy companies that are profitable or at least have a viable product that I have heard of. Also, I always trade with limit orders so I can have slightly less risk when buying. Once I have bought the stock, I put an automatic sell order to trigger between 5-10%. Not to difficult, and it has been working pretty well. It clearly involves a lot of risk, but my goals are all short term so this is fine.
The first company I bought this year was oil transporter Frontline, which turned over the 7% in a week, apparently pushed by higher earnings of other oil companies. Next, I bought Biosite, which was low because 3 of its top executives left or something. Either way, it dominates the growing market for heart protein tests that detect chronic problems, and it soundly beat earnings last week, giving me another 10% gain. I had also bought Highland Hudson group, which is somewhat undervalued and seems to me to be in great shape with no debt although not much profit on its large revenue. It also beat its earnings this week and I sold it today at a 6% profit as well. So far the only loser in my portfolio is the one large cap Dow Jones company I bought to reduce my risk: Microsoft. I bought it at a low point (down because they screwed up xbox 2 deliveries) and I figured it would jump when they release Vista. Maybe it still will, but it has sucked in the mean time, despite huge earnings and continued dominance of all its products. Anyway, This whole venture is looking like a pretty good idea. Add investing to my list of hobbies.