When To Sell

robertbanking

Hello everyone, hope you are doing well and enjoying your week. Lots of rain here. 

I have had a good run with an investment Seagate Technology which manufactures hard drives i have held this for 18 months. I have a rule that i sell investments that are down 30% for the cost price. However does anyone kindly know when the best point to sell 100% of an investment that is doing well please? Would this be when financials or growth becomes less impressive please? I know for instance Warren Buffett has held Coca Cola stock for years but i suppose everyones formula is different. If anyone had any thoughts on this i would be very grateful please, thank you for your kindness.  

Thanks for all your support, it means alot. I believe this is the best forum around because of the very respectful and intelligent people in this community. Take care. 

ewaste

Generally this is a forum of people who don't do much if any in the way of trading or holding single stocks. You sell it whenever you want to or need the money is the short answer. Although if your asking on a forum you probably should reconsider holding single stocks.

The long answer is a combination of opinions on metrics like price to earnings including cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings based on rolling averages etc. Some people may just sell when they've reached an arbitrary point e.g. 20% more than what they bought at or the share price is above it's X year peak.

Phantom151

Always a difficult call. I tend to remove my original investment but that very much depends on the divi return. I have few that have done well, a few that haven't but provide decent dividends. They will remain for me anyway.

Albermarle

However does anyone kindly know when the best point to sell 100% of an investment that is doing well please?

Why does it have to be 100% , why not sell part of it to hedge your bets?

lozzy1965

Everyone has their own rules as you say.  I assume you mean 30% FROM their cost price?
For individual stocks, if you are diversified,  periodically rebalancing is an option.  The theory being you buy the dips and sell the peaks.  It never quite works out like that in reality though!  All this assumes that you have your fundamentals (a word I hate) correct and the stock isn't about to go bust or dip never to recover!

jamei305

When the reasons you purchased it no longer apply and you wouldn't buy it based on current information.

london21

I mostly invest in funds.

Depends on your strategy and how long you intend to invest for.

Has anything changed significantly? Do you need the money?

When to sell, a decision only you can make.  

Voyager2002

You sell when you have something better to do with the invested funds. We are currently seeing a "rotation" out of technology, with value investing coming back into fashion. It is unlikely that a tech-based stock such as this will grow by so much again over the next 18 months, so look for something else that is likely to deliver the return that you require.

Thrugelmir

No one ever went bust by banking a profit.  As for selling a 100% of the investment depends on the value/how much stock you own. BH has owned 10% of Coca Cola for decades and has had a close association with the business as a result. Offloading such a holding would seriously disrupt the market price. Very different scenario. 

MaxiRobriguez

Sell when the fundamentals no longer match your investing strategy or if there's a better opportunity and you need to raise money for it.

Guess the question is what made you buy Seagate in the first place?

adindas

robertbanking said:

Hello everyone, hope you are doing well and enjoying your week. Lots of rain here. 

I have had a good run with an investment Seagate Technology which manufactures hard drives i have held this for 18 months. I have a rule that i sell investments that are down 30% for the cost price. However does anyone kindly know when the best point to sell 100% of an investment that is doing well please? Would this be when financials or growth becomes less impressive please? I know for instance Warren Buffett has held Coca Cola stock for years but i suppose everyones formula is different. If anyone had any thoughts on this i would be very grateful please, thank you for your kindness.  

Thanks for all your support, it means alot. I believe this is the best forum around because of the very respectful and intelligent people in this community. Take care. 

This is multi millions GBP questions. If we could learn/know when to buy and when to sell it with 100% accuracy, We will all become multi millionaires.

But this is Peter Lynch, one of the greatest hedge funds on earth  Main Rule "Know what you own and know why you own it". Other investors call it "you will need to have a thesis". When you are sortt of swing trading it you will also need to decide at what price you would willing to buy or sell it ?? This is to set up your limit sell/buy take profit or Stop Loss preventing a major loss.

Also Lynch's view : Volatility is there as inherent part of the market and you will need to embrace it and take advantage of it or suffer from it. Everyone like his/her investment up 30% but noone like to see his/her investment go down 30%.

When you want to sell it you will refer back to the previous thesis when you originally bought it. This is just a few examples of questions that could come up:

- Has anything fundamentally changed when you originally bought it ?. 

- Has the environment changed that if you keep your investment at the same place and it will no longer grow or even die (assuming you are aiming more for growth rather than dividend) ?

- Do you need the money or have you seen other opportunity so you could sell all or part of it to make your money working harder ??

- Are you happy with the current return ??

Your stock in question is "Seagate Technology"; unless they personally own it not many could easily answer that question with a great accuracy without spending numerous amount of time performing fundamental and technical analysis, reading numerous amount of news regarding the stock in question. Even they could do that I don't thing they could advice on this matter unless they are a regulated Financial Adviser. Also only you know your initial thesis.

So imo this is a kind of question that only you could answer.  Just be careful about getting advice from random people from the internet.