bought some OFI

I bought a small portion of OFI today. It broke out to a new high of a nice pattern and actually has decent fundamentals, for a cheapie stock.

I bought it with a limit order at around 11am. I've been re-evaluating my buy strategies after hearing from 2 different sources that you should wait til after the opening volatility settles down before you buy. First source says to wait til 1-1.5 hrs after open, and then not to buy if the markets are down or if the group of stocks you're looking to buy are down. Then, a book I'm reading (Rule the Freaking Markets) says to wait 1/2 hour after open and then not to buy your stock unless it is higher than whatever it opened at. And if your stock gaps up and stays up through that first 1/2 hour, that's a powerful sign, which is what OFI did today. The reason he says to wait is that frequently a stock (and the entire market) will gap at open from pent-up demand of pre-market trading and market orders that have queued up all night. MMs run the prices up or down filling these market orders at great prices for themselves. After all this fills, the market or stock fades back toward equilibrium.

I can see the point. I would prefer to do market orders the night before and let it fill. I'm looking for a bigger swing than a few cents, but still I don't want to be taken advantage of. Plus, I like the first argument that you want to wait and see what the market does before you buy. No sense getting in on a day when the whole market might be going down and your stock has to fight that much harder.

The downside of waiting is that then I'm watching stocks intraday and I start to second-guess myself and chase stuff. Although I didn't today. I had one other order that didn't fill and I let it go. I put a fluorescent green stickie on my monitor that says "There is ALWAYS another stock."

I'm starting to study candlesticks quite a bit lately, too. There are some pretty decent built-in scans at stockcharts.com and I've been following them and trying to apply what I've read.