Investor Corner/Staying the course/Closing Mindset Pieces
6.1.5 When to Sell
A reasonable time to sell is when the original reason for buying no longer holds, when a fund's process has genuinely deteriorated, when a goal has actually been reached, or when rebalancing calls for it. Selling purely because prices fell is rarely a good reason on its own.
Good reasons to sell
If a fund's investment strategy or management has changed materially since you bought it, if a company's fundamentals have genuinely deteriorated in a way that changes the original investment case, if a specific goal linked to that money has actually been reached, or if rebalancing calls for trimming a position that has grown beyond its target weight, each of these is a legitimate, considered reason to sell.
The reason that usually is not good enough on its own
Selling simply because a price has fallen, without any change to the underlying reasoning that led to the original purchase, is frequently a reaction to short-term volatility rather than a genuinely reasoned decision. If nothing about the original investment case has actually changed, a price fall alone is generally not sufficient justification to sell.
A useful check before selling
Before selling, it helps to ask directly: if I did not already own this, would I buy it today at the current price, given everything I currently know? If the honest answer is yes, the original reasoning likely still holds and the fall may simply be normal, temporary volatility. If the answer is genuinely no, that is worth exploring further as a real reason to reconsider the position.
How PriLytics helps. PriLytics shows your goal progress clearly, so you always know whether a specific target has actually been reached before deciding whether it is time to sell. See goals with guidance.