Ok so I have a confession to make.

Sometimes, with small amounts of money I will put in a limit price order that is valid til expiry at a SP of something like 25% less than current price. A bit like setting a notification for price alerts but this way I'm forced to be involved rather than flicking away the notification. This is because I have a good few watch lists and probably too many notifications and price alerts set up just because I enjoy keeping an eye on what's going on but the ones I order will be companies I have a little more faith in, or shamelessly like the story of enough to throw speculative dollars at.

I realise this is potentially a dangerous game to play and half the time I'm catching the falling knife and still suffer a pretty sudden loss and other times I miss out on buying a good company at a price that conveniently dips to a mere few cents above my set price. Oh well....

I had a couple of months ago an order for CGS at $2.28 which sat for a while until there was a cliff drop. Panicked a little as I wasn't cash heavy so threw in a sale order and managed to offload within 48 hours at $2.34

This entire exercise resulted in my brokerage fees being covered on the way in and way out. Whoopty doo.

Then I hear of it come up again and check out that I've narrowly avoided following the stock down to below $1.60 - equally I've had companies double only a month after performing the same exercise under similar circumstances.

Would I be putting more money in now if I was down at 70% my initial investment so soon? Would anchor to my purchase price and foolishly wait for it to get back up there before adding to a position? Even I don't know.

This straw is more of a psychological statement than anything to do with CogState in particular but my hope is that if you see it you can relate to some degree.

NOW I suppose it's time to get in and do some more research. If I was happy to buy higher, I should be equally thrilled to get another 20% discount!

Straw on.