I find selling the hardest part. That's the end of the exercise. It's now out of your hands. Buying is easy. Firstly you are looking for something to buy and hope springs eternal that whatever it is will rise in value. You might have several choices and you have a well thought out process for narrowing those choices down. It might get a little tricky if you want to get the best price possible, do you chase or wait for the price to come to you, what if you wait and the price just keeps moving away from you, what if you buy and the price drops, in the end you buy and the adventure starts. The possibilities are endless. You can make a quick profit, you can be underwater, you can have a long term investment that grows or a drag on your net worth that keeps dropping in value. You don't know until you sell!! That's what makes selling the hard part. The adventure is now over. Whatever the stocks does from here on in doesn't have any affect on your net worth only on your mental capital. It's a battle I struggle with, especially with stocks that have moved significantly in my direction. I have tried to set up a process that eliminates the emotion involved in selling positions. I attempt to ignore the price I paid for a stock and judge it's value to the overall portfolio by how it is contributing to the portfolio growth. I have a rule that I won't hold a stock that is underwater in the portfolio. I won't hold a stock I wouldn't buy today. (Does it meet all my buy criteria) We can debate whether investing is superior to trading but I doubt we'll change each others minds. Trading works for me. TSLA may or may not do what you expect. You have already decided how much capital you willing to put at risk. Have you considered the risk to your mental capital?
Concerning TSLA, it's the least of my worries, my mental capital is safe. As I've said elsewhere, an action is an act of self confidence, of being willing to live with a decision. When it's a mistake I do my best to learn from it and move on. When I start trading again, once I recover from the deep losses of the last couple of months, I will diligently create stop loss orders to avoid those mistakes again.
How are you going to recover from the deep losses of the last couple of months if you are not trading? Or are you referring to mental capital? Now you have me a little confused. You are going to create stop losses in the future but not right now. I'll assume that your past mistake was letting small losses turn into big losses. Could it be you are doing the same thing all over again because of your self confidence?
TSLA dropped 30%. I did not set stop losses. I'm now waiting for TSLA to recover.... not complicated.
Saying that is if there is no doubt it will recover. Nothing is certain in this world - especially with hi-flyer high multiple stocks heading into a rising interest rate/ high inflation rate environment. Deep losses can always get deeper.
I know your opinion of TSLA and wonder if you even trade it. How did Ford and GM fare in the last 2 months without their high multiple stocks? No better. TSLA is not immune to macro events, but it will recover much faster.
Were F and GM previously trading at astronomical valuations? Higher than almost all other auto companies in the world combined - did I miss that somewhere? Anyway I suspect they all might be down further EOY. This has nothing to do with any long term projection concerning TSLA or any other auto company because it is ridiculous to even attempt to extrapolate current happenings or next year's to say what will be 5 years hence on the scale change happens nowadays - practically on a daily basis.
F and GM did not trade at high valuation, but their value dropped 30% just the same. Point being is the drop is macro political economic related and not anything to do with TSLA.