First of all, I really wish HBI had something to do with beef.

I think you're learning two lessons I've learned the hard way. One is the way you set up your stop loss and the other is the timing such that you bought on release day.

Looking at HBI, I would have felt better about setting a stop around 25.20 - near the lows set on 3/11 and 3/17. A more aggressive stop would have been 27.40 - just below the low set on 3/28.

Googling "how to set a stop loss" has some advice around setting up an effective stop-loss. If you set a stop-loss too tight, you're practically guaranteeing that your stock will stop out and you will hand your money to your broker and another investor/trader. Set it too loose and it won't serve it's purpose - to manage your risk.

The other issue is regarding the nature of trades around earnings' release. When buying/selling around earnings' release (HBI released their earnings today), pay attention to how often a company will report good earnings and the stock will drop. You have to learn to buy on the rumor and sell on the news. If there's a company you like, say HBI, and you know it's about to announce earnings, start paying careful attention to the ticker about a week ahead of release. You're looking for signs of how the professionals are trading the stock. These are the people who monitor the garment industry, who know what the retailers' same store comps are, who live breath and eat the market and the industry with which your potential investment concerns itself. Underwear, in this case.

With HBI we see that on 4/14 it ticked up almost 4% on nearly triple normal volume. Why?

Not much movement on the 15th but again very high volume. On the 16th, up almost 5% on 2x normal volume. Then a decent sell-off on Friday.

It's certainly not 100%, but when a stock ticks up strongly before earnings, you can bet that industry professionals - who don't know confidential insider information but who are highly attuned to the industry - are expecting good earnings. It's not unusual to see some profit taking the day before earnings' release.

However, what's not unusual at all to see is a bunch of people who show up late to the party buying the stock AFTER earnings taking a bath as all the professionals sell off during the release day.

Google "how to trade earnings release", for example, for some insight and advice on what's going on in the market around these releases.

Don't be "dumb money"! I'd google "dumb money" and read up on the sorts of things "dumb money"...uh...do? does? are? Anyway, learn how the dumb money behaves, and you'll learn a lot about what to avoid, what to watch, and hopefully, what to do.