As 2021 opened, I was looking for Covid-related stocks worth trading. After some research, I settled on Atossa Genetics (ATOS) — a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company with a Covid treatment in development.
I bought ATOS at $1.37 on 19 January 2021. A week later, on 26 January, I sold half my position at $3.50, a sale price just over 2.5 times what I had paid.
Selling only half was deliberate. By selling enough to recover my initial capital plus some profit, I made the remaining shares effectively house money. If the stock went to zero from that point, I would still be ahead overall. If it kept running, I had exposure.
Up to then, I had never held a stock for more than a year, and ATOS felt like the right candidate to start with. The plan was to hold the remaining half for a long time — years, not months — and to be comfortable with losing it entirely if it came to that.
When I wrote this in January 2021, I was not sure what the future held for ATOS. But the discipline of separating house money from real money was something I wanted to apply more consistently going forward.
This is not financial advice. Just a record of one trade and the thinking behind it.