Customer Reviews

It's When You Sell That Counts

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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Don Cassidy has written an absolutely fascinating book. Each and every chapter is a gem in itself. Any investor who reads the book and diligently follows the advice given by Cassidy would do very, very well in actively managing his/her investments.

In particular, the book helped me to overcome some of the mental blocks that Cassidy mentions and enabled me to sell some shares of a stock that I had fallen deeply in love with, i.e. the stock of the company that I work for!

I am sure that the profits that I have reaped by following Cassidy's advice have paid for the price of the book, several times over.

I would also like to post the titles of all the chapters in Cassidy's book since I noticed that the book's webpage doesn't have them and also because I think just reading the titles of these chapters would spark the interest of those who still haven't read it...

Table of Contents

Sect. I. Roadblocks to Profitable Selling: Real Problems, Phobias, Myths, and Rationalizations Ch. 1. External Roadblocks Ch. 2. Hidden Reasons We Resist Selling Ch. 3. Internal Rationalizations

Sect. II. Developing the Proper Mind-Set for Profitable Sales Ch. 4. Acknowledge Mistakes Ch. 5. Keep a Clear Head Ch. 6. Transform Denial into Action Ch. 7. Require Realism to Support Hope Ch. 8. Forget Your Cost Price Ch. 9. Understand that You Sell the Stock, Not the Company Ch. 10. Adopt Survival Tactics for the Institutional Jungle

Sect. III. Mastering the Contrarian Approach Ch. 11. Be a Contrarian Ch. 12. Focus on the Time Value of Money Ch. 13. Rethink That Old Buy-and-Hold Religion Ch. 14. Calibrate Decision Making to Personal Emotions Ch. 15. Adjust Sale Targets Rationally Ch. 16. A Suggested Exercise in Self-Discipline Ch. 17. Separate Selling from New Buying Ch. 18. Use the Personal Diffusion Index Ch. 19. Overcome Greed: Stop Chasing the Last Eighth Ch. 20. Sell When It Just Feels So Good Ch. 21. Sell into Price/Volume Crescendos and into Long Runs

Sect. IV. Selling Tactics Ch. 22. Differentiate Market Stock and Loner Stock Characteristics Ch. 23. Use Above-Market Instead of Stop-Loss Orders Ch. 24. Use Special Rules for Selling Low-Priced Stocks Ch. 25. Sell Smart on Good News Ch. 26. Understand How Bad the Bad News Is Ch. 27. Sell on News Delays Ch. 28. Selling versus Holding in a Crash Ch. 29. The Hold/Sell Decision Checklist Ch. 30. Summing Up: The Winner's Test

Appendix Index

This book has 2 problems, which account for my low rating:

1. This book is focused only on "trading" and not investing. In other words, it seeks to maximize short term profits, and does not deal with the investor who is willing to take risks and ride out adversity and selling opportunities for a profit in the long term. Unfortunately, this orientation is not explained in the book description, and is only stated as a "by the way" on page 87. I probably would not have bought it if I had known this. For the investor, this book is of very limited value. It is hard for me to judge the value to traders, since I am not very knowledgable on the subject.

2. The bulk of this book is explanation of technical sell indicators. There is no attempt to connect between them, merely to catalog all the various "sell" signs. The fact that many of the indicators may contradict themselves with an individual stock is not dealt with.

On the positive side, the first part of the book lays out a laundry list of reasons why there is a bias against selling, ranging from the nature of the brokerage industry to behavioral economics. I found this part of the book very interesting and fresh, and it provided useful food for thought about my own patterns of selling. If you can find the book cheaply, it is worth the price for the first section alone, even if you are an investor and not a trader.

I admire this book for the insight it bestows and for the elegance of the presentation. I have looked high and low for just such books and have found surprisingly few. The breadth and depth of Donald Cassidy's expertise is nothing less than impressive. As a powerful added bonus, he does a fantastic job of communicating, organizing and presenting his understanding and knowledge.

I am strongly recommending this book to my closest investment friends, and I suggest that any independent investor who is truly serious about mastering the art and skill of trading, at least take a close look at this book. Also, be sure to look at Mr. Cassidy's other two books.

This easily beats all the other psychology AND buying books I own. It's a great investing pyschology book without a megalomaniac author. It has great technical analysis methods and will teach you quite a bit about buying also. From understanding stock prices in relation to buying and selling pressures, to the avoidance of getting trampled by mutual fund elephants, this is the guide.

Selling is usually as popular as candy the day after Halloween. During secular bull markets selling is frowned upon as buy and hold turns into investing religion. And since sell violates the "hold" covenant of that religion, the investor who buys and sells is labeled as a nonbeliever, or even worse, trader (if you say 'trader' fast enough it sounds like 'traitor').

In secular bull markets, on average, sell decisions are not as rewarding as hold decisions, as market valuations are expanding and even second caliber dogs (stocks) start looking like pedigreed cocker spaniels. Every investor is now a "long-term" investor and sell becomes a four letter word. But being a long-term investor is not about longevity of your hold decisions but it is an attitude. Holding a stock because you bought it is a fallacy; you should only hold a stock if future risk adjusted return warrants it.

Warren Buffett has been mistakenly promoted (though, I'd argue demoted) into the god status of this buy and hold temple. Let's correct this mistake. Warren Buffett became a buy and hold investor when his portfolio and positions became big enough, pushing $60 billion, when selling became a difficult undertaking. In his early career, before "Oracle of Omaha" became his middle name, he was a buy and sell investor. Being on the board of some of his biggest holdings (like Coke and Washington Post) made selling even more difficult.

One doesn't need the benefit of hindsight to know that at 55 times earnings Coke was tremendously overvalued in 1999. Coke, like the majority of his top public holdings (Washington Post, Procter & Gamble, Johnson and Jonson and many others), did not go anywhere in a decade.
I dare you to take a look at his top public holdings and tell me if he would have done a lot better if he sold them when they became fully valued (or slightly overvalued). In most cases it would have been a decade ago.

Emotions pour from different directions when we face a sell decision: If it is a losing investment we want to wait to break even. This is the wrong attitude. Our purchase prices and sell decision should not be related (the only exception I can think of is tax selling). Or when it comes to selling a winner--we want to sell only at the top. Again this is the wrong attitude: the top is only apparent in hindsight, when it is usually too late.

We should sell the stock when it reaches our price or valuation target, determined at the time of purchase. We (our emotions and false goals to be exact) are our biggest enemy when it comes to investing and especially selling. This wonderful book has been written to fix this. Its objective is to recalibrate your mind and free you from imprisonment of past decisions, break you free from the buy and hold state of mind and turn you into a buy and sell investor.

This is a terrific and a very important book. A proper sell discipline will decide between great or mediocre returns for even the best-crafted buy decisions. Pros may want to skip a few chapters, but it is an important read for everyone, especially in today's environment.

It is one of those things that most of us never thought about in the 90s, SELLING. The author does a very good job of describing the psychological roadblocks to selling. Additionally, he gives you a good technical and fundamental set of rules to follow on holding vs. selling stocks. There are two books that I would recommend on selling, this and "When to Sell" by Justin Mamis.

Cassidy does a good job informing investors that there is more to investing than simply buying stock and then forgetting you own it. The selling decision is a vital part of the investment process for all successful investors. The author discusses reasons why investors fail to sell intelligently and guides them to making better decisions. Once the decision to sell has been made, I recommend investors consider using call options to sell the stock at a price above the current price. To learn how to accomplish this with options, read THE SHORT BOOK ON OPTIONS.

As Cassidy points out, there are a lot of books on buying stocks, but few on selling them. This book deals strictly with selling. The chapter "Understand How Bad the Bad News Is" is excellent.

I, like a lot of my investor friends still own most of the stocks I had in Nov 2007. There has to be something very wrong with that investing plan since I rode them down for a near 50% loss(so far).

I have often wondered over the past year or so, "why didn't I sell some of my stocks when I had a profit?"
This book helps you understand why people hold on to stocks and why a "never give an inch" buy and hold philosophy can be disastrous. Cassidy hit me perfectly when he classifies some owners as 'collectors'. I've done that with stamps, land, and other assets. As he says, I became a stock packrat.

The third part helps you set up an investing plan that includes recognizing prudent selling points and how to set a target and to discipline yourself to pull the trigger.

The fourth part gives selling tactics to help you beat the crowd and take your profits.

This book is not a lesson in day-trading. It is a good book for all investors to have so they won't be locked into a mindset that prevents one from making money.

For anyone who invests, this is really a must read book. The psychology of when to sell a stock is more difficult that when to buy. This book is extremely insightful on sell decisions. It really helps get an investor over the rationalization process of avoiding selling a stock that must be or should be sold. An all around great book. Not a typical nonsense pop investing get rich type of book. I wish I had this years ago and then had the moxy to follow through on the advice.