Hi:
This brings up the "sell to book a profit" thinking that is prevalent. I argue that the profit is there whether or not you sell it, but I suspect almost nobody agrees with me.
Consider, you sell your AQN for 17%, then buy something else that declines by your AQN gain. How is this better that just holding AQN which also perhaps declines by the AQN gain? At the end of the day a round trip between $100 to $117, and back to $100 again is equivalent whether done with one, two, or 20 stocks, no?
So I focus on portfolio weighting. If my target weighting is say 5%, and a holding inches up to 7 or 8%, I sell some to get back towards the target. Similarly, if it gets down to 4, 3, 2%, I add to inch back towards the target weighting. Really just the same thinking of asset allocation the folks do between bonds and say a stock ETF holding.
A real example from my portfolio is OSB. It was over target a couple months back, so I sold some at $38. Lousy timing as I sold more yesterday at $42. Sure would be nice to have the $4 difference on the shares sold at $38, but I am no better at selling at the highest possible price than I am buying at the lowest. It is sitting at 9.2% of portfolio with a target of 10%, so right on plan. What I am successful at over the years, decades even, is letting someone have the first 20%, someone else have the last 20%, and being happy with the 60% in the middle. Over 12 years or so, my cost for all time in OSB is something like say $12, so someone else got the $6 or so between the decade low of about $6 and my $12. Similarly, somebody else got the $4 between $38 and today. I have made a good living on the $12 to $38. This is just approximate, for I have sold and bought in the $20s too over the years, but if I did the research down to every last penny over 12 years, I would find that I am pretty close to claiming the 60% in the middle.
So to my way of thinking, a 17% gain in a short period is not actionable.
hboy54