To sell or not to sell

[Blueeyedmale]

I'm quite new to investing and manage my stocks and shares ISA and my SIPP pension all by myself the first thing I did was buy a load of nvida stocks over the last year it's been up and down and over the last few weeks it's been rising quite rapidly especially with the new chip announcement a few days ago would you sell now or would you wait and see if there is a lot more potential growth.

I would never have shared in a single stock unless you’re into gambling rather than investing

Following - Not a sipp but similarly have stocks and shares ISA which is - probably stupidly - a lot in American tech. I don’t have many other savings and the gains have been huge past 2 years. I’m also wondering if I should sell now or start diverting money to diversity for keep going on US tech for now. It is feeling very bubble like and wondering if I should step aside now.

That's what I've tried to do buy stocks in a wide range like rolls Royce, marks and Spencer, Vodafone, SSE but like you unfortunately I do have a few American stocks too but regarding nvida it's a tough one because of the new chip announcement it's been rising rapidly over the past few days and I'm really tempted to sell but I may live to regret it

So sell half?

If there a reason you're buying individual shares and not index funds?

@Blueeyedmale I'm really tempted to sell.

As PP said, you could sell a portion of it, not the whole position.
You could see how it fits into the allocations of your overall portfolio, e.g. what percent tech do you want, what percent financials, energy, etc., and pare it down to reflect that.

This, really.

Thank you everyone half seems like a sensible choice at the moment

I can't remember whether it was Charlie Munger or Warren Buffet who said "don't even think about holding a stock for ten minutes if you're not prepared to hold it for ten years" and I think this is generally sound advice.

I only sell shares if something rises so quickly in value that it unbalances the portfolio. I tend to take between 50 and 75% of the profits, and reinvest the proceeds into something which restores the balance. I did this with Rolls Royce last year, and I'm about to do it with Filtronic and, possibly, Raspberry Pi. The only other really big risers I have are funds (specifically, Scottish Mortgage) which are already diversified.

I'm fairly new to investing and would absolutely not have the confidence or knowledge to pick stocks. I've gone with a global index fund. So yes, I'd get out and do that.

Yea like you I'm quite new to this myself a pp mentioned index funds but I know this probably sounds dumb but I have no idea what index funds are lol sorry, but I will read up more about them this evening thank you

I have stocks and shares and half is split between Nvidia, Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, Raspberry Pi, Amazon, Alphabet, and Tesla. The other half split between Legal & General, Standard Life, Rightmove, Rio Tonto, Rolls Royce, Asta Zenica, Bae Systems, Chevron, Total Energies, Shell and Barclays. I think it pays to diversify. AZ is doing badly and oil not too good but once Straights of Hormuz is resolved I think it will go back up.

With tech shares I try to buy when shares are low in value then sell when high. Then I wait until they go down again to rebuy. You have to keep an eye on them though. The others I just buy them leave for 6 months then review.

Depends on how long you’ve had it, how much profit you’ve made, and long you want to hold it going forward. There’s market rotation going on at the moment and there’s a high chance that Nvidia will drop a bit short term. Although nobody can tell you for certain.

I think you have 2 options, recover the original investment or take the profit and invest it elsewhere. Personally I would be inclined to take the first option, but it all depends on relative values, your attitude to risk and what proportion of your portfolio is Nvidia stock, if it's only say 1% maybe don't do anything.

To be fair, it’s definitely been a stock pickers market this year. The market has been driven up by a select few stocks, while much of everything thing else has been crashing. Anyone buying the index will have missed out on the big gains.

Read Bessembinder and buy indexing funds - go global

But investing is about the long term

i index, my portfolio was up 28%. It’s also going to be top quartile for ever. No fund manager manages that, read the research. Isolating one year is misleading.

Agree. Overall my funds are up 47%

I've had them a reasonably long time so the gains are compounding as they should (although my data centre REIT has gone crazy recently!)

A year is nothing and what the PP is describing is more gambling than investing.

Over what period? 47% is irrelevant without timescale - I’m not being snippy, just that 47% in 5 years is very different to 10. I agree single stocks are the same as gambling - even with many professionals, easy with other people’s money

10 years

If this is long term I’d add a few more global stocks or get a wider spread using a big global index, you’re only just beating inflation. Again I’m really not being snippy, but in real terms you’re only worth about the same (41% inflation over 10years). If it’s a risk issue, that’s different, but more equity would boost returns, yes and volatility, but that doesn’t matter if you’re not a forced seller.

Inflation is about 31% over the last decade as far as I know.

According to BoE it’s been 40.9% - check out their calculator.

You may not be in the UK, that’s my assumption and clearly I could be wrong in that.