When do you sell your stocks?

[agrinwithoutacat]

Often I wait for mine to get over 100% and then sell, but I'm always afraid it will continue to go up afterward. I've been being very patient with NAKR recently and it's gone up to 200% which, since I have 3000 shares, is a lot of profit. If it keeps climbing then I'll regret selling, but if it drops down significantly before I sell then I'll regret not selling. :/

It got me thinking about what other people do in these situations. Is there a method you guys use to determine when to sell?

[Steve]

When I first started I set my selling point at 60. The market at that time spat out a lot of 60's often so I wouldn't really have much of a portfolio and I didn't really need money at the time, so I bumped it up to 100. So far I've stuck with that, and have had some luck with (I think STFP?) recently. I don't really pay much attention to a stock unless it rises above 75, although I am tempted sometimes when they hit ~85, but usually stick through it and wait out for the long term investment.

[Angeló]

i don't sell under 70 !!

 

sometimes 65 if the stock is known to not rise a lot ...

[kaybee92]

If you're trying to build your portfolio still, sell at least 1k at 30. This makes back your investment and gives you 15k NP to buy 1k of another stock. It's a low enough sellpoint where there's something moving pretty often.

 

Nowadays my portfolio is nice and beefy so I sell 1k at 35 (old habits die hard...and a lot of stocks just fall back down), and greedily wait out the rest till 90+

 

My most recent big sale got me a few mill because I had money in LUPE and it ended up hitting over 500np.

[gingerew]

I sell at 60, or higher if I'm feeling risker that day :P

 

But I don't think that there's a right answer/number that works for everyone. It depends on your comfort level, how much free NP you want, how much you can afford to be tied up in stocks, etc. When I first started I sold at 30 because I needed more NP to invest quickly. Now I'm happy selling at 60, but I think there's an argument to be made at any number.

[the_lady_j]

True, everyone has a different number. Mine is over 100, but then, I'm not in a hurry. Most of my buying and selling habits started as I tried to get the avatar. It was the most I ever kept an eye on it. I don't know if I ever saw one go over 150, so if it's at 200, I would sell. No regrets - you can always buy more! :laughingsmiley:

[snowangelmidori]

When I started out I was selling at 30NP, bumped it up to 45NP, 60NP and now I sell at 75NP. I was choosing what price to sell at based on NEODAQ's reports for a while, but now that I have a larger portfolio I just wait it out until the 75NP point. Usually I'll sell a third at 75NP then hold or sell depending on whether it goes up or down. I've never held above 85NP but once it gets a little larger I'll bump up the sell point to 85-100NP.

[Shelley]

I'm extremely impatient. So I'll even sell below 60% at times :whistle:

 

depends if I'm on a spending spree or if I need more money quickly.

 

but I try to stick to the 100% increase for a sell

[Rune Valentine]

First question here is: how big is your portfolio? Are you still building it? If you are, then selling at stocks at 30 will be very beneficial for you, since you're earning 15k off your initial investment, meaning you can buy more stocks. Do this until you have at least 60k shares.

 

After that you can get away with waiting longer, because you will (hopefully) have a few more companies invested into your portfolio. At this point you can sell half of your holdings at 45, then again at 60. I don't believe in waiting too long for stocks to go up (70 or higher) because 1) this rarely happens in the period of 8 months - 1 year for more than 2-3 stocks and 2) you need consistent profit to keep building your portfolio.

 

In the case of when I would sell, I definitely base it more on the stock itself than just my "sell point". Making an informed decision as to when would be the best time to sell without losing out on future profits highly depends on what kind of stock you want to sell. Using NeoDaq's Report Card, you can see some stocks rise faster than others, and drop just as fast. So for stocks like AAVL, NAKR, FAER, etc with a grade of C, selling some at 45 will likely guarantee you haven't missed out since they're less likely to go up to over 60 on their run. To be honest, I haven't seen NAKR go up to 60 in over 2 years. For stocks that are A/A+, waiting for 60 is a good idea since they're likely to go up there when they start to rise.

 

I never sell all my stocks at one sell point, I definitely keep a buffer of at least 10k shares in case they rise even higher, but I can afford to do that since I have at least 25k shares in all the stocks I'm holding :) For smaller ports, a 3k or 5k buffer will give you a little peace of mind.

[Lia Seeya]

When I was first starting, 30-50 was my sell point. Now that I've got more stocks in my port, I can wait until they hit 70/80 to start selling a few off.

[AllTimeMarr]

I sell at 19-20 :'))) Because I really have no patience whatsoever.

[el_blubo]

I usually sell at 60, but I'm uping my sell price to 75

[minniemeggie]

Now that I have a pretty diverse portfolio I often just buy stocks that are in the 15-16 range already in my portfolio. That way I have a few thousand shares in each of my stocks to play around with.

 

If I have more than 2000 in a stock I sell 1000 at 30. I then sell the remainder at 70-80 depending on how the stock has been behaving.

[blackberrypatch]

I wait until it's over 300%. I only sell a few times a year. :P

[dasbif]

I buy 1000 shares at 15 daily, and sell when they are over 100% (over 30np/share). Takes seconds, no stress, I've earned a few million over the past few years doing this.