The trouble with off-hours orders

A nice feature of online trading is "off-hour orders" but there's a very annoying downside. The convenience comes at a price. I felt it today.

My favorite online company, citiseconline.com has this feature and I use it for days that I cannot watch the trading real time. As I had class today during trading hours, I put in a sell order for a tiny amount of MER shares at 81.50. At the time I was doing this, I was working on the assumption that the recent rally was sputtering and coming to an end. I was wrong. When I got out of class early, I saw MER at 84! My sale at 81.50 was of course completed by then. I could have easily sold it for more. But nonetheless, a profit is a profit no matter how tiny it is.

I realized that we rallied today because there was tons of good news, the kind that will push our market up.

-The Philippine's GDP grew by 7.3% in 2007 which was labeled as the fastest in 31 years.

-Also, the BSP cut interest rates by .25 basis points and the government announced that there was an increase in Money supply amounting to 9% in december, year on year.