RE:RE:RE:yesterday...yearninyank wrote: I maybe wasn't clear enough. I set out to sell one third of my position. It was exactly the right call and I wish I had not tried to sell at the limit I chose. It was too high so my sell order did not fill and I still have those shares and they are worth less today than what I could and should have slod them for. It would have been right to dump my entire position and come back in. But, sticking to the half eaten donuts analogy, even though the donuts are half eaten and getting increasing stale I have to be careful that a murder of crows does not fly in and grab them up while I am not looking - so it is ok that I am still holding and at this rate I will probably do the move today that I should have done yesterday but I'll take a smaller bite. It may seem counterintuitive to sell something I am holding long but missed opportunities abound here.
Well, you're lucky in my opinion. I too had the same thought. I saw the announcement come out that Health Canada had officially approved the Pfizer vaccine yesterday, and I saw the stock start to quickly drop. I thought "here we go again . . ." and I decided to sell, knowing I would buy back in 20-30 cents lower. It's become a bit of a predictable pattern, no? Except that didn't happen. Immediately after selling, the stock jumped back up about 10 cents, and my brokerage wasn't even doing market orders (not that I would do them anyway) due to volatility.
It was in that moment that I shook myself and said - what are you doing? Are you day-trading this stock, trying to make some petty cash, or are you in "investing" in this stock because you believe in it over the longer-term? Well, I swallowed my pride and bought back in 10 cents higher than what I sold for, and filed it away as a lesson to remember. Even though it did have the anticipated drop today, what if I was caught with my pants down on big news?
The stock market is a funny thing. As far as short-term price movements, you would think you would get it right about 50% of the time just based off dumb luck. Yet, it seems like you can truly only get it right about 25% of the time when making short-term decisions like the one above. I still remember an exercise one of my highschool business teachers had us do. We all got into pairs, and spent $10,000 of imaginary money on stocks we picked out of the newspaper. We tracked our stocks, made trades, etc. for a few weeks and then reported back at the end. Out of the whole class, only one pair ended in the green.
Anyway, a quick reminder yesterday why I'm an investor - not a speculator.