# When to sell?



## Nifty (14 May 2007)

My big problem is when to sell. I pick right then sell too soon I held  AIM it wallowed went up to 15.5 I sold then it peaked at 36 I bought YGL at 10 and sold at 12.5 its now 20 I bought NDO at 18.5 and now its 29 There must be an answer


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## Joe Blow (14 May 2007)

This thread has been moved to 'Beginners Lounge'.


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## tech/a (14 May 2007)

Couple of things.

(1) Your displaying an apparent fear of loss. This can be minimised by simply altering your position sizing to one where your more comfortable. I'll also guess that you dont know how to correctly position size your trades relative to available capital and Risk on any one trade---or infact a group of trades.

Which brings me to 

(2) It also seems you dont have a trading plan or strategy. This in itself doesnt guarentee better profits or profit at all unless you KNOW through rigorous testing that the method (How you open a trade wether you trade with a stop and what mechanism you'll use as an exit) you have decided to trade has a positive expectancy over a great deal of time and a great number of trades.

Id suggest you do some serious research into the above before you embark on trading.


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## Nifty (14 May 2007)

Joe Blow said:


> This thread has been moved to 'Beginners Lounge'.



My question is; Is it only beginners that pick right and do not know when to sell,and by that implication are all the "Experienced Traders" multi millionaires just trading to avoid boredom?


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## Joe Blow (14 May 2007)

Nifty said:


> My question is; Is it only beginners that pick right and do not know when to sell,and by that implication are all the "Experienced Traders" multi millionaires just trading to avoid boredom?




Hi Nifty,

Welcome to ASF!

No, when to exit a stock is a topic relevent to *all* traders, but especially to beginners. Hence my reason for moving this thread to the 'Beginners Lounge'.

It's not just beginners that roam the 'Beginners Lounge'. Who do you think answers all their queries?


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## Nifty (14 May 2007)

Joe Blow said:


> Hi Nifty,
> 
> Welcome to ASF!
> 
> ...



O.K Joe Blow pleaser direct me to the thread 
When to sell


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## Joe Blow (14 May 2007)

Nifty said:


> O.K Joe Blow pleaser direct me to the thread
> When to sell




You're in it. Tech/a has already responded to you.


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## rederob (14 May 2007)

Nifty
Rearrange these letters to form 3 words and a secret will be revealed.

PART-GAIN LAND


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## clowboy (14 May 2007)

TRADING A PLAN


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## nizar (14 May 2007)

Exits are a very big topic.
Put simply you should sell when either:

1) Your initial stop is hit. This represents the worst case scenario most of the times (of course there are black swan events). You should be ready to accept this because you will get stopped out ALOT. The % of capital lost when stopped out should be no more than 2-3% of capital. I used to use 2% but it was far too much for me, now i use 0.5-1%.

2) An exit is triggered. Exits may be ATR based, time based, long term moving average based, or based on the discretionary approach of support and resistance levels. Some people exit a stock after they have reached a predetermined %profit, eg. 100% profit.

Van Tharps - Trade your way to financial freedom is a good read, and you should find that useful in helping you develop a trading plan.


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## It's Snake Pliskin (15 May 2007)

nizar said:


> Exits are a very big topic.
> Put simply you should sell when either:
> 
> 1) Your initial stop is hit. This represents the worst case scenario most of the times (of course there are black swan events). You should be ready to accept this because you will get stopped out ALOT. The % of capital lost when stopped out should be no more than 2-3% of capital. I used to use 2% but it was far too much for me, now i use 0.5-1%.
> ...




Nifty,

*Be careful of the regurgitation of what people yet don't understand.* 

Spend the rest of your life learning about exits and you still may not have the answer to your question. Dispensing with your biases may be a starting point though.


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## nioka (15 May 2007)

Nifty said:


> My big problem is when to sell. I pick right then sell too soon I held  AIM it wallowed went up to 15.5 I sold then it peaked at 36 I bought YGL at 10 and sold at 12.5 its now 20 I bought NDO at 18.5 and now its 29 There must be an answer




Your problem is deciding when NOT to sell. I only sell when :-

                    1 If I lose confidence in the Company
                    2 If I decide to take some profit
                    3 If the fundamentals are in decline
                    4 If I find something decidely better

Your problem is probably a lack of patience. Relax a little.


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## tech/a (15 May 2007)

clowboy said:


> TRADING A PLAN





Trading a plan wont guarentee better profit.
How do you know the plan isnt a plan for disaster?---which most are.

This is one of the most bandied about "Trueisms" which has no consideration to practical application and actual results of "The Plan"

Best start with developing a plan which can be tested over a reasonable period with enough data to produce statistically significant results which prove a *positive expectancy*.

*THEN*
Monitor the Numbers generated by the testing to be sure "The Plan" is confined within those numbers.
If you dont understand the above *then you need MORE THAN A PLAN.*


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## Nifty (15 May 2007)

nioka said:


> Your problem is deciding when NOT to sell. I only sell when :-
> 
> 1 If I lose confidence in the Company
> 2 If I decide to take some profit
> ...




You have hit the nail Nioka, patience is the main problem,One cant emulate Warren Buffet in a week.
However, my thanks to all the erudite traders for their constructive comments.


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## tech/a (16 May 2007)

> One cant emulate Warren Buffet in a week.




You'll never emulate Buffet.

Buffet doesnt trade and never has.
He buys what he percieves as undervalued Companies and then (as he controls them) turns them into better valued companies.

Not the sort of thing too many can emulate.


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## happytrader (16 May 2007)

Nifty said:


> My big problem is when to sell. I pick right then sell too soon I held  AIM it wallowed went up to 15.5 I sold then it peaked at 36 I bought YGL at 10 and sold at 12.5 its now 20 I bought NDO at 18.5 and now its 29 There must be an answer




Hi Nifty

Are you sure you have a problem? It appears that you made a profit on all your selections. You are obviously doing something right.

Cheers
Happytrader


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## Go Nuke (16 May 2007)

Guys i have a quick question.

Is there a way that you can see what amount of shares were bought and sold in a company for that day??

For example it 4pm now and i want to see if any big orders went though and if they were buying or selling.

Thank you.
GN


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## Synergy (16 May 2007)

I use the SMH page to check out intra day charts and course of sales. May have to sign up to view them, not sure. Free though. They've recently updated the page.

eg...

http://markets.smh.com.au/apps/qt/quote.ac?section=chart_daily&code=MBL

Cheers


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## Realist (16 May 2007)

Easy question.

Buy shares in a truly great company that pays good ever increasing dividends.

Then you'll never need to sell!  


You'll never pay tax, and each year you'll get nice franked dividend payments
 

Trading is far too hard work. Not only do you have to find a winner and buy it at the right price, you have to know when to sell and how to calculate all the tax and brokerage you'll owe. Too hard for me.


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## Caliente (16 May 2007)

nifty - you've asked THE question. Everyone writes books and the like about how to enter a position, but everyones selling point is different.

My personal strategy is to ask myself - would I still buy this share now at this price? 

Generally if I find myself saying its too expensive, than I know its time to get out. 

This is a purely subjective opinion so, it will differ for you.

As for losers, I have what most consider a high drawdown tolerance of up to 25%. Don't know why, its just the figure I've grown comfortable with over the years. Any more than that and I'll pull the trigger.

Best of luck to you
- its a great time to be trading!


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## YELNATS (16 May 2007)

Go Nuke said:


> Guys i have a quick question.
> 
> Is there a way that you can see what amount of shares were bought and sold in a company for that day??
> 
> ...




Try a useful link someone on ASF gave me a few days ago http://stocknessmonster.com/

regards YN.


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## steven1234 (19 May 2007)

I do my trading with NAB.  NAB provides for free info on all the trades that went through on a given day (or the last day prior on weekends).  

You get to see each parcel of shares traded and at what time.  It helps you pick up where there is some manipulation going on in the share price (eg a trade goes through at close to manipulate the closeing price)


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