Citibank – C – Is this a good time to get in?

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First of all anyone who is looking to invest in C anytime soon, needs to put all their emotion aside. I usually find people having a real love-hate relationship with stocks. If you are a day trader and love the stock when it moves 2% up and get sad when it moves 2% down, small changes like that should not really bother you.

That is exactly what is happening with C right now. People who have lost bunch of money (who got in early last year at rates much higher than current rates are crying wolf right now. Honestly speaking I like to take some risks so I personally let the stocks fall to the rock bottom and start rising again, thats where I like to get in. So guess what I did, I purchased around 3000 shares when C was trading in the vicinity of 3.28$ and I was not sure how high it will go. So when it breached 3.5$ mark, I set a limit order to sell at 3.6$. To my surprise my order went through the same day. All this happened last week. March 2010 so far has been my lucky month.

The trick to the game with C right now is that you either play it as a day trader, with all that short term volatility, or you buy it and hold it as an investment, i.e. for over a 12 month time horizon.

Obviously today, March 16th is critical as it is the end of the lock-up period for the US government’s holding of preferred shares. One thing that comes out of this is that a lot more clarity should be forthcoming once the government’s intentions become visible to the market.

So, it’s play with the short term-ers, or take the longer view as a portfolio investor. You are the only one who can make that call. But the bottom line is that if you are able to get in with a price in the vicinity of 4$, you are almost guaranteed to make decent return in next few months.

You might want to take advantage of 100 Free trades from OptionsHouse to avail this opportunity with C. OptionsHouse is giving away 100 free trades if you sign up before April 30th 2010. All you have to do is open the account and make a deposit.