Sold USAT. Bought more TICC.

Today I sold my shares in USA Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:USAT).  I sold 3,140 shares for $2.30 each.  At one point I had hoped to sell for $3 a share, or maybe even a lot more than that, but the last time USAT closed at over $3 a share was 29 April, 2011.

USAT closed at $2.62 on 28 March, 2013.  But I first bought some shares of USAT about 4 weeks later, on 26 April, 2013.  Between then and 21 May 2014 I accumulated the 3,140 shares that I sold today.  I spent a total of $6076.37, including fees, on my purchases.  Not counting the fees, I spent an average of $1.9256 per share.

My net profit on today's sale was 18.69%.  Not bad.

USAT is the company that makes it possible for you to buy a Coca-Cola from a vending machine when you don't have any cash on you.  Just swipe your card and out clatters a can or bottle.  Done.  I think I've seen the USAT name on one such machine at some point a few years ago.

They're name isn't on the machine anymore, though.  As best I can determine, USAT has licensed their technology to Crane Co. (NYSE:CR) which puts its MEI brand on the swipe-reader on various machines I've encountered in the wild.

On some level, as a shareholder, I would prefer it if USAT's name was on the machines.  I decided to sell.

Now, USAT seems to be a healthy stock.  It's had 4 consecutive net-positive quarters, and seems to be ever-expanding the places you can spend money.  Still, although I had hoped to sell USAT for $3, recently I decided to lower my sell price and cash out.  USAT has crossed over $2.30 in intraday trading a few times in the last year.  Clearly that was attainable, so I put in my order a few weeks ago.

Well, evidently $2.35 was the magic number.  That was today's high.  USAT closed today at $2.14 a share, though.

USAT will announce their most recent quarter's results on 23 September.  The stock may be quite volatile between now and then.

Here's something noteworthy, though:  Yesterday Apple announced the advent of the new Apple Pay system, which may go a long way toward making our transactions more secure AND, incidentally, slowly replacing credit cards over time with smartphones and smartwatches.  I don't see the Apple Pay system as being healthy for USAT in the long term.

Meanwhile, I took some of my proceeds from today's sale and purchased more shares of TICC Capital Corp. (NASDAQ:TICC).  It pays an awesome quarterly dividend, and its next ex-dividend date is 2 days from now on Friday 12 September.

I'm sitting on some cash, though.  I have some of the proceeds left over because I don't want to put too many eggs in the TICC basket.  I'm thinking of maybe buying some shares of Google, but for now I'm going to try and see if I can leave some money uninvested in any equities for more than 24 hours.