Don’t sell your best picks too soon

Article Excerpt

We generally advise against selling your best picks too soon. The same advice applies not only to your individual stock or ETF holdings, but also to your ETF portfolio, in general. By holding on to your best ETFs or stock picks, you improve your chances of latching on to a market superstar—a stock or ETF that will wind up producing two or five or 10 times more profit than average. Over the course of any investing career, you need a few super investments in your portfolio, to offset the losses you’ll have from the inevitable duds. At the same time, our “sell-half” rule says that if you own a stock or ETF, and you have doubled your money, you should sell half—so you get back your initial stake. Note, though, that the sell-half rule applies mainly to more speculative investments. Every case is different, but generally you should hold on to high-quality stocks or ETFs even if they’ve doubled in price. One exception…