Most of us do not have an Exit Plan , as I often said its easy to buy But it is most difficult to know when and how to sell. We tend to want to be Investors until when adversity arrives, we somewhat regret we didn't take advantage of exuberance at its height.
My exit plan was reaching my targeted level of profits , and I actually did exceed the target but it was just for two days before it started to wind back, that was the signal to me that it was time to do something before it gets too late , since Doing Nothing is Doing Something. Then what I did was decide which to let go and which to retain, and did the scaling back as well. But everything started turning and profit levels impacted , then decided enough is enough.
I am not after Life Changing profits , I would rather sidelined completely during the storm and wait for the storm to pass before returning to the scene. Yes, Time the Market can save lots of quid, because Nordique retracement can be very unkind and do injustice to all good work from past months.
At the end of the day, outcome is mostly determined by Selling Decisions. Buying and retaining Long Term just because of mainstream mantra of investing must be equated with a Long Term Hold does not necessarily produce optimal returns the way mainstream suggest. The use of indices to reflect the merits of long term hold can be a complete misrepresentation of reality because firstly indices are progressively recalibrated to exclude underperforming stocks and inclusion of performing ones and secondly they do not necessarily include the very stocks you own.
