Practical Portfolio/Trading Question
OK, I have a dumb/practical question that I have for everyone and I was hoping that I could get some good responses.
I have a portfolio that I am doing OKish trading (I'm about even with the market, maybe slightly ahead, but it depends if you take into account dividends or not I think). I pay 2 bucks commish on every trade and I try and trade in 1000 dollar allotments.
So here's the question: When do I sell? I can usually pick out a few stocks every day that have extranormal potential and I'm right about 60 percent of the time. But for the losing stocks (for that day or week) I don't know when to dump em. The rub is that as they go down in value the next purchase (using the now reduced dollar amount sub 1000) has the same commission of 4 dollars (2 for the sell, 2 for the buy), and so I need a higher return to break even. Also, I worry about selling at a loss - but if I keep them in the portfolio and flip the winners only I could get a bunch of losing trades becoming a larger stake in the portfolio.
So that's a bunch of stuff. If anyone has any input to give I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks!
So you are basically day-trading? How often are you turning over positions? You shouldnt enter a trade without having some idea of your exit whether that means buying more on a dip or selling for a profit at x%. Sounds to me like you are cluelessly gambling and have no real investment thesis or system in place. Good luck with that.
Thank you for providing no insight whatsoever. I am stupider for having read your comment. Congratulations.
I have an investment thesis, and am beating the market currently. So if anyone has any interest in answering my original query I would be grateful .
You need to use stop-loss. And i think what junk bond swap was saying is that from what you posted it doesnt seem like you have a plan for what to do for losses. What you need to do is before you buy the position you need to set a stop loss point so that when the stock reaches a certian loss you sell regardless of what your emotions tell you
I don't believe in stop-losses. You can get burned on irrational movements by selling on news that gets misinterpreted and the stock bounces back (or worse yet, a flash crash).
I decide whether to close out a loss if after further research I discover the fundamentals aren't what I thought they were or if the catalyst I was waiting for didn't move the stock (or didn't happen). It seems you have really high portfolio turnover, and if that's the case, then your investment style is totally different from mine and a fundamentals-based analysis might not be what you are looking for as far as when deciding to exit a position.
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