When is the right time to sell?

Iā€™d say stop loss or take your original investment out & let the profits rideā€¦ maybe stop loss the profitsā€¦ If you believe in the companyā€¦

Well done on getting a 100%er ! :tada: Your doing great gal :hugs:

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Who is doing it or why are the feeds getting split? Every other comment goes somewhere else :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

Thanks @Optimisery, really appreciate all the advice you have given me along the way. On another note our Velo3D shares are flying today too, good to get rid of that 70% loss :blush:

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This topic was created to give better visibility to the great question that @Emmie raised.

Off-topic posts will be moved to the relevant topic thread or be removed if they are not constructive. Please read the community guidelines.

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Thanks for spotting this, @NeilB . Yes, all about spreading the Honey love. Given the state of the market and inflation where it is, we wanted to offer sessions on tackling inflation through investing/intro to ISAs etc.

Weā€™re open to suggestions on the exact topic, we just want to be helpful and we know People/HR teams in London have been looking for ways to empower their staff around money management recently.

If anyoneā€™s interested or wants to pass the idea to their own HR team to get in touch, please feel free to drop us a line at honey@freetrade.io. Might even be some Honey swag in there for attendeesā€¦

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Not that I want to prolong the discussion at all, but I thought it was a good idea to split this topic (and indeed giving any obvious topic itā€™s own thread). Why?

When Iā€™m looking for tips on when are good circumstances to sell a stock and I search for it on the forum:
a) Will I find it when the thread title is ā€œWhen is the right time to sellā€? Yes, most likely.
b) Will I find it when the thread title is ā€œBeginner Questionsā€? Possibly, but far less easily.

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Thanks for the stop loss tip, never thought of using it. Have now installed for my biggest gainer. Its at 72% up and should go further, but this as you suggest will stop any risks of losses.

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You need to learn the difference between investing and trading.

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Iā€™m finally getting around to reading The Intelligent Investor which I can hardly recommend enough.

In the book, Ben Graham writes: ā€œThe intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.ā€

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Thought I would just let everyone know how this panned out. The share price has plummeted and I was saved by my stop loss order which meant that I got 81% of the profit. Really grateful for all the advice!

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Yeay! Congrats on a win!

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Hi

I just started too buying stocks online. I sold a few in panic then the price shot up so i have learnt to wait and do more research. Its quite interesting.

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Thats good advice. I plan to keep stocks for a year and see how the market goes. Im into renawble energy sector

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Not so much in a panic but I did exactly the same as you. Sold National Grid for a nice profit at around Ā£11.53. Then the price went up to over Ā£12.40! Now I sell stocks in batches of 5 or 10 depending on how many holdings I already have!

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Hi there!

I like the mantra ā€˜Only date stocks; never marry themā€™ - because very few stocks go up without some kind of retracement along the wayā€¦ Microsoft went down -74% and took 15 years to make a new high after the dotcom bubble. If someone blindly held it through all that, their money was doing nothing for them for over a decade.

For me, sell signals are usually a break of a key moving average (as that is where a LOT of other people will also sell - like the 50 day, or the 30 week), or just a simple trend line along the lows, and selling when price breaks that. On short term swings I like Stan Weinsteinā€™s rule of sell at the break of a previous low.

One of my favourite things to do is to sell 50% when Iā€™ve made x% profit - that way, if it drops I can say ā€˜Iā€™m glad I sold halfā€™, and if it keeps going up I can say ā€˜Iā€™m glad I kept halfā€™. You canā€™t really lose with that strategy - plus, if it does fall, itā€™s like having a parachute, you donā€™t have to panic sell because the drop in profit is slower.

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This might help too: IBD are great for technical advice.

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The moral of the story here is watch the business. Microsoftā€™s investment thesis changed. And changed substantially - that is why the share price started to go up again.

The moral of the story is not that moving averages (MA) are a good way to decide to sell. They (MA) may or may not be, but so called ā€˜technical analysisā€™ has many detractors and is mainly of interest to people who are ā€œtradersā€ rather than investors.

This leads back to the moral of the story: investors should watch and make sure that the reasons for their optimism in a company stay firm. If the reason you invested changes (and those reasons may be affected by the prevalent macroeconomics) then it is a time for reassessment.

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A lot of long term investors use moving averages - especially 30 week and 50 day. Itā€™s no coincidence that a stock will sell off on heavy volume once it undercuts one of these.

Many also use an anchored VWAP from their initial investment, or the IPO, to decide on what the best average price to add to their position is.

As for Microsoft going down - Everything did - The entire market crashed. A simple moving average sell rule wouldā€™ve locked in the majority of gains vs unnecessarily losing it all to a market crash.

I can only repeat what I said @DirkDickens: these kind of things are for people who are focused on share price and not on business fundamentals.

Microsoft was a dog for many years - and for good reason. But perhaps you had to be in the industry sector and/or a person who looks at business fundamentals to understand this. If one doesnā€™t have the time to get down to the nitty gritty then there are many pop business articles which tell people how much of a transformation it has been.

I repeat to others reading this and in particular to people new to investing here: spend more time understanding the business than messing around with share indicators which donā€™t tell you about the business.

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Surely a balance of both fundamental analysis and technical analysis is better than exclusively one or the other?

Otherwise, youā€™re basically driving with one eye open.

Itā€™s worth remembering that 3/4 stocks follow the the index, so regardless of the fundamentals of a company, a bear market will drag it down with the rest - sometimes for years.