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Investment Q&A

Not investment advice or solicitation to buy/sell securities. Do your own due diligence and/or consult an advisor.

Q: from p hodson moments ago.......

"Unfortunately we think too many investors are playing individual stocks and not following a portfolio approach"

bingo!

if you have a balanced portfolio, you hold 25 individual stocks averaging 2 - 5% each

on a 500k portfolio, if you had 5% in CXR and bought at the peak ($117) and sold today at $12.17 you would have lost $22,500 (ish)

on an absolute basis $22,500 hurts, yet a portfolio loss of 4.5% is nothing

even with this loss, chances are some of the other 24 issues were up and you clipped a few divvies and likely your portfolio is flat to + 3 - 4% ytd

yet people are greedy and contrary to accepted wisdom want to
over buy the most risky of assets

and then 'double down' to 'get back my money'.....

5I is not a baby sitting service; sometimes you must put on your big boy panties and learn to read a chart or at a minimum institute a system which will allow you to cut your losses

history repeats again and again and yet again

don't look now but the north American equity markets are at all time highs and sitting on deflating earnings and increasingly lower breadth......

maybe 4.5% was a gift; a wake up call as it were

cheers
Read Answer Asked by Robert on August 16, 2016
Q: I should have dumped CXR immediately after receiving your email on Friday, but incorrectly assumed that the 20% drop at the time was as bad as it would get and that I would just wait until I made some other portfolio tweaks next quarter.

I've decided that I am going to replace CXR with BIIB. Would I be best to do this immediately or wait another quarter? Can CXR really go any lower? Perhaps it will get a bounce and outperform BIIB in the short term as value investors move in?
Read Answer Asked by Andrew on August 16, 2016