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The “buy low, sell high” mantra is often espoused but rarely carried out. Most people do the reverse. While I’m not one to sell low, I do find it hard to sell big gainers, because how do I define “selling high”?

Should I sell my shares of Ford because they are up 196.59% as of the moment of this writing? What about Google, which was up 25.67%?

They’re certainly higher than when I bought them.

Would it make a difference if I told you that dollar-wise, both are up about $80 in total since I bought?

I don’t feel like selling for an $80 profit, but those are two of my biggest gainers. Especially in the case of Ford, I know it’s not typical for a stock to have that big of a gain, percentage-wise. Not even remotely.

The smart thing to do would be to sell. Like, right this second.

Did I?

No.

I didn’t sell Ford, because it’s not an investment for me. It’s a silly little bet that I made on the spur of the moment one day. And I like betting, so, ok. Although strangely, if I bet $41 in Vegas and they gave me $120 or so back, I would immediately walk away. In fact, I probably wouldn’t bet anything at all the rest of the trip.

I know my behavior in that respect is irrational, but I’m doing it anyway. And I’m not sure why. Hope maybe? Greed? Both? I think I’d just like the chance at being able to say, 10 years from now, that “oh yeah, I bought Ford back when it was two bucks”. I want to feel like the exception. Which is stupid; yet I’m doing it anyway.

I did consider selling Google, but again, didn’t do so. In that case, I didn’t sell because I believe (irrationally or not, we’ll find out) that it will continue going up, in general, over the very long term.

In the end, I’m going with the holding period that I decided on initially when I bought all of my stocks: hold for at least 10 years, no matter what, unless I decide differently up front on a stock purchase. And really diversify across companies and sectors.

I think the most important thing is to have a plan. Hopefully it’s a good plan. My “no matter what” part might be a little bit dumb, but I guess we’ll see.

Of course there are other (more logical!) plans out there, and I’ll write about one of them fairly soon. If you invest in stocks, do you have a plan? What sort of plan is it?

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