Hello fellow traders , great to see the ft picking up at last !!! hope pfizer proves to be the real deal. just a quick one, my shell shares are now 15% in the green , im thinking about taking profit , but hear different ways of approach. id like to hold on to my original price back in june, and will be topping up again . do i sell half of the total amount? or 3/4 of the amount or just skim the profit the result in green bit? or leave the whole thing and just keep adding until the ft gets back to 7500… and in to he future. looking to sell so can top up on IAG . hope some one can help. steve ;]
Up to you.
20+ I’d consider taking if you see no further growth OR its a reaction to an event (vaccine news) wait for market to correct and establish new trading range and then buy back at a discount having cashed in on your profit this adding more shares to your holding for nothing.
OR
Sell if you see a better opportunity elsewhere.
I sold some that went up 25/50pc after the news. I’ve kept some in cash to buy them again when they drop (hopefully) I’ve put some in ones which dropped s a result of the news, over reaction…and I bought a slow grower Divi.
Everyone has their own techniques but I am less fussed on selling a good dividend payer like shell unless I think it’s really worth it.
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Thanks for the info , yes i sold national express in 3 small chunks to learn the next 3 days it risen to 49% ! oh well. im not in for short run more long term but nice little payouts help to add in on other buys. looking into further dividends GSK ABBVIE M&G P&G etc. certainly selling to re invest only.
thanks again. ;0)
if you’re more of a swing trader mindset planning on holding anywhere between a few days and a few months then i’d recommend you read Mark Minervini books and William O’neil. Minervinis second book in particular goes in details over selling strategies, and portfolio managment.
thank you froop, will look those up. 
Are you not going round in circles if you take money out now, then top up again.
If you plan to top up, surely you see future value, so should you not keep your shares, or do you see the current SP is over risked in the current market and might fall back?
Hi pls can you give us a hint of the contents of the book
It depends on a lot of factors relating to compounding. Not all stocks grow in a way that mimics compounding year on year, or day on day. Some stocks will apear to compound if you look over a long time. I do sell my positions to lock in some profit as it’s just numbers on a screen until that point and I want to take profit as it comes.
There is a very long and divisive thread here from a couple of months ago on the topic.
It completely depends on your strategy, buy/sell rules etc. There’s no one right way to make money in the stock market. People can be successful using completely opposite strategies. The important thing is to have one, write it down, and keep to it.
Re: the books I mentioned:
This webinar he did with David Ryan ( who was mentored by William Oneil of Investors business daily/ CANSLIM fame) is a good starting point on his approach:
or a review of his 2nd book:
It wont work for everyone, it requires ALOT of work and far more hands on than choosing a few companies on fundamentals and holding for a few years.
Generally speaking Mark and similar approaches aim to on average compound 10% to 20% gains, using say av 5% stops on anything from 10% to 25% position sizes. So on say a ÂŁ100k account, your buying ÂŁ20k worth of stock with 5% stop = ÂŁ1k at risk if your stop is hit, so 1% of your account, but he is aiming to make 3 times this on his wins so ÂŁ3k. if your batting average is say 50% then this compounds over time. The idea its much easier to catch alot of 10 to 20% moves vs holding for 100% plus. That said he would hold for longer/bigger on select few names that show great price action.
The moral of his is to do the math! Work out what your expectancy is.
i see it at this point at risk of pulling back down to where it was 2 weeks back, but yet it seems to be holding at 26 % return for last 4 days. i could buy in increments over the next week or two perhaps, so if it drops to 2%… this is where i would buy back in. how longs a piece of string… nex on monday jumped up 47% so at this point i sold 3/4 of stock to realize the profit . and now i would like to re buy using those profit gains for when it goes back up in future.
compounding using the gains as above. 
Unless your profits are large this method opens smaller investors up to large CGT bills due to the value of the trades, you have to way up how much profit you will actually realise by selling and then buying slightly lower again against just holding and not going above the CGT threshold.
Obviously depends on how much your investing but worth looking at properly as just making trades increases your turnover sometimes dramatically.
The number of investment books out there now is insane its like football books in the 80’s, if one method worked the best we would all run out of trades your best off creating your own trading strategy and stick to it
thank you for your reply lenos, im small time trader most of my stocks are held in ISA section , there are a few i need to shift over from invest - isa . im now buying more stocks in s and p as the pattern of growth seems better , plus checking eps levels on a stock etc. my strategy is to make profit and return it to a stock in the red ,as above. compounding on profit and if dividends cometh. as i say im only looking for small profits so currently my total level of investment is only 4 k not planning to go much more than this… i think … for now. 
4k x by the number of times you completely replace it = 12 times for CGT threshold. Just worth thinking about.