Allan?? Mr. Statistics, any ideas to work your excel magic???
Don't think Excel, or even Mathematica can help us here. A couple of things come to mind when I look at the posts concerning holding winners. The first is, don't fret it if ya won. Rothschild said that his secret to making money was simple, a "sure thing" he assured his interlocutor, "I never buy a bottom and sell too soon." (paraphrased) The other thing that came to mind was Livermore, who waxes at length about how hard it is to hold winners: "The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it." and "It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight." These so-called oldtimers were seeing the world in longer timeframes, but it's still relevant.
Now, I've not been trading long so I don't want to come off as some kind of sage, but the question comes down to timeframe. If you're a holder, then I guess you hold until it does something that's technically out of place. If you're a momo-type, then you need the money when it slows down so you can move on to the next momo play.
Shaw mentioned EWD, IW, and WV and wondered whether there might be a pattern. Yup -- they keep going higher. -g- The point I'm trying to make is, if one could afford to tie up capital for holding, then none of these stocks would have offered you much of a chance to sell them recently -- technically speaking. But, it's hard to hold on to, say EWD, when you buy it Jan 10 at $9 and then watch is slide to $8.50 over the course of 7 trading days. The point that more learned people than I are making on this and other threads is to only buy them when they are offering a good risk/reward ratio.
For EWD, when it got to $8.50 there were many reasons to see that it was a good time to buy. Hindsight is easy, but this sort of setup presents itself often.
My few cents. Cheers. --Allan |
