When is the right time to sell?

[bitflip]

Yes, you are 100% correct my interest here was to make sure that new investors realise that moving averages, resistance level, past peaks etc etc are not a way to outwit the market or make good decisions about buying or selling. If your decision panned out - well yeah random events occur.

There is an interesting and quite famous paper by Hoffmann and Shefrin Technical Analysis and Individual Investors Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization which using Dutch investors concluded:

Overall our results indicate that individual investors who report using technical analysis are disproportionately prone to have speculation on short-term stock-market developments as their primary investment objective, hold more concentrated portfolios which they turn over at a higher rate, are less inclined to bet on reversals, choose risk exposures featuring a higher ratio of nonsystematic risk to total risk, engage in more options trading, and earn lower returns.

this updates the results of Lewellen, Lease, and Schlarbaum (1980) “Portfolio Design and Portfolio Performance: The Individual Investor”, Journal of Economics and Business (I think based on US investors) which concluded

Technical analysis severely degrades the performance of individual investors’ portfolios.

I don’t follow this sort of research work anymore - so don’t know much about recent follow ups but I understand that there are several. I don’t get surprised with the adherents of “technical analysis” as basically you need very little training to do it largely because it is not “technical”. It is obviously compelling to some people … lots of jargon … much like “intelligent design” so you can think you are doing clever things. I think that @House makes a salient point in When is the right time to sell? - #43 by House 'you are not even sure if it’s in the country you are in". There is quite a lot of depth in that seemingly simple statement.

I go back to the beginning: As a new investor your time is more profitably spent trying to understand the company you are interested in, the general business area or even better stick with a core world index as your mainstay long term investment.