Ride the market or sell now?

There is an old saying that we learn from our mistakes. But if this is true, why do people continually make the same mistakes believing it will be different next time?
It is not unusual to see portfolios with losses on individual positions of between 50 and 90 percent, especially in times when the market has had significant falls like we experienced in March of this year.
Obviously, large losses on individual stocks can have an extremely negative impact on the overall performance of an investor’s portfolio. When I question investors why they continue to hold these stocks, invariably the argument is that these good stocks will rise back up to their previous value. But this raises two questions: firstly is the stock really a good stock and when will it rise back up to where it was?
When stocks fall heavily in price, the investor is attempting to ride out the market, but is this the best move particularly when they are potentially losing capital and the opportunity to invest their funds in other assets that are rising. What is interesting is that investors will happily ride out a losing stock rather than liquidate it for fear of losing. However, they will gladly sell winning stocks too early for fear of losing the profit they have already made.
Telstra is a perfect example of why the old adage of ‘buy and hold’ is an inefficient strategy and why investors would have been better off selling their shares rather than holding.
By November 2010 Telstra had fallen from its high of $9.20 set back in February 1999 for nearly 12 years into a low of $2.55. It then rose up to $6.74 by February 2015 only to fall back down to $2.60 by June 2018. Yet people continued to hold onto Telstra in the hope it would get back to its previous highs.
This week I reviewed the top 20 stocks in regards to how often they closed higher than they opened for the year. And yes, you guessed right, Telstra was not good on that front, as it only closed higher than it opened for the year 50 percent of the time.
If we look at the last six years, Telstra has closed lower than it opened in five of those years, yet people held onto it in the hope of making money.
The goal to investing wisely is to always preserve capital, as this in itself would improve the portfolio performance of the majority of Australians holding stocks, which can be achieved by simply applying an exit strategy.
Dale Gillham is Chief Analyst at Wealth Within and international bestselling author of How to Beat the Managed Funds by 20%. He is also the author of the award winning book Accelerate Your Wealth—It’s Your Money, Your Choice, which is available in all good book stores and online at www.wealthwithin.com.au
Where to invest $1,000 right now
When the experts at Next Investors have a stock pick, it may pay to listen.
The Next Investors have been investing in ASX small cap stocks for years, with their best small cap picks yielding returns of 1,200%, 1,120%, 900% and 678%.
They have just revealed their hand-picked, FY2021 stock portfolio of high conviction long-term investments.
Click the link below to see what they are currently investing in.
S3 Consortium Pty Ltd (CAR No.433913) is a corporate authorised representative of LeMessurier Securities Pty Ltd (AFSL No. 296877). The information contained in this article is general information only. Any advice is general advice only. Neither your personal objectives, financial situation nor needs have been taken into consideration. Accordingly you should consider how appropriate the advice (if any) is to those objectives, financial situation and needs, before acting on the advice.
Conflict of Interest Notice
S3 Consortium Pty Ltd does and seeks to do business with companies featured in its articles. As a result, investors should be aware that the Firm may have a conflict of interest that could affect the objectivity of this article. Investors should consider this article as only a single factor in making any investment decision. The publishers of this article also wish to disclose that they may hold this stock in their portfolios and that any decision to purchase this stock should be done so after the purchaser has made their own inquires as to the validity of any information in this article.
Publishers Notice
The information contained in this article is current at the finalised date. The information contained in this article is based on sources reasonably considered to be reliable by S3 Consortium Pty Ltd, and available in the public domain. No “insider information” is ever sourced, disclosed or used by S3 Consortium.