My first 'sell' order

Just where I left off in this morning's post, I put in my first 'Sell' order.

Most would think, "chey, want to sell, just sell lor" But like most things about investing, its different when one is invested vs one who is watching from the sidelines.

So I offer the decisions and perspective from an investor who is deciding whether to sell or not.

First, I really dun have a clear idea how high can the stock rise to in one shot, given that it has started rising. One would never know unless with hindsight, how high the stock would rise in this one shot or wave.

This is when one has to set a investment target so that if the counter hits it, then you can start considering whether to sell or wait and see a bit or revise your target.

Next, is actually deciding whether to ACTUALLY sell the lot at a particular price and putting in the order. One would think this is easy but IF the prices actually went up alot after you have sold off yours, you have to just live with your decision made at that point in time with the information you had then. Hindsight is always 6/6, remember that and dun lament if later you missed the chance to make even greater returns cos you had sold too early. Just live with it.

Lastly is NOT to spend the gains freely. Remember the gains should be reinvested so that your pool of investment money increases. Of course, a small treat after a certain targeted total amount is reached is also advisable, so as not to spend everything in euphoria.

For my dad, the stocks are now his money-generators given he is retired. He has enough savings and makes extra from the stocks when opportunities arise. For my case, I just made my first sale on a counter independant of my Dad's typical counters. I sold off the few lots, and made a small capital gain. It was at the price I had targeted and the returns is 41.9% roughly within 1 month. Its not a big sum of money, still way off from making my annual income from shares alone and therefore retire. I shall keep track of gains. BUT this small gain still CANNOT offset the paper losses on my first 2 lots of shares where the losses amount to 2.5k.

I had came across the counter somewhat accidentally and reaslized that its undervalued. Did do some homework by checking out the SHARES book, the nature of its bix, SGX and monitor its historic prices and NAV before I went in with a small sum. I wanted to buy in more but within 2 days, the prices started rising. Again given I wasnt sure if prices would fall thereafter, I didnt buy more, just had 5 lots. So now it has become one of the 6 SG counters I am monitoring. I am looking at more than 6 counters in my mostly daily excel file monitoring but those I didnt buy-in cos wasnt sure or for a few, the prices are still very high, so I just monitor it as a proxy to certain industries, eg a ppty developer cos I have a few ppty related stocks.

For now I am adopting my own First-In-First-Out or Last-In-Last-Out record tracking. What does this mean? Well I had bought 2 lots of shares too early hence even with the rise now, I am still sitting on losses. BUT I had bought more lots when the prices were lower earlier then. So IF I sell of at current prices, I would take it as selling off the cheaper lots at profit, and keeping the more expensive lot for later. Something like that.

Oh yar, btw, work today was less tramatizing though still tiring.