"If your investment is in a secular growth area it is best to sell your cost and let your profits run. I made that mistake with AAPL selling it during..."
Not clear to me. You're saying the mistake was to sell your cost and not let the remainder shares (from profits) continue on? From my perspective, the mistake was to sell any shares at all at that time. (Which I also may have done. Not sure.)
For me, my learning (again imprinted from Munger with Costco) is to be very cautious and reluctant in selling moat stocks/wonderful businesses when they seem overpriced. I see I've held MCO for about ten years. Just sort of cruising with it. Every time I look I see it's overvalued, and I say time to sell, but I haven't had a plan to deploy the funds. So I just put the stock back in the drawer. It's been Munger who crystalized my perspective: MCO's moat to evaluate bonds is unique and goes on year after year. Be the business owner and stay with it, I tell myself.
This too, is part of my nature in that I do not believe in the ploy of "Just sell. You can always buy back later at a lower price." I've found that I forget to follow the stock, the stock drops with the market and I never get to it, I don't have investing funds at the time, it doesn't seem so appealing, or maybe, just wait, the stock will go even lower. Or if the stock continues higher after I sell, it's very hard to bring myself to step up at a price higher than I sold for. |
