Stocks are a downer

Panic!  Stock-market "correction" in progress!  Sell EVERYTHING!  Or not...

Thankfully, sabotlours reminded me that I should have emergency sell-stop orders on all my holdings, in case the wheels fall off while I'm not looking.  I adopted the Oxford Club's 25% off rule, which says you should *always* sell if the stock drops to 75% of its peak price.  So I placed 25% stops on most of my holdings, except for TNA I placed a 10% stop because it's so scary.  Then TNA went up a lot and hit new peaks, but I didn't get around to adjusting my stop prices.  Then it fell 10% on Wednesday.  Then it fell some more on Thursday, triggering my sell-stop order.  Then I started reading about the VIX, which is predicting an imminent correction, so I sold everything (except DRETF) that had negative indicators.  I feel better now!  I guess the most aggravating part of momentum investing is deciding how long to hold a stock after the indicators say "sell".  The least aggravating approach: just sell it!  I don't really need a "long-term hold" category, just a "long-term interest" category which means I continue to follow the stock when I'm not owning it.

Symbol Hold days Gain per day Rule Actual Rule Actual RYOCX 21 2535 +0.43% +0.01% TD 19+ 65+ +0.18% +0.04% TNA 7, 22 52 +0.87% +0.74% RYN 16 40 +0.17% −0.03% VWO 0 24 +0.00% +0.05% JNK 24+ 46+ +0.11% +0.05% DRETF 17 27+ +0.05% +0.10% DRR 6 9 −0.04% −0.40% FLIR 9 13 +0.23% +0.15% KOL 20 22 +0.25% +0.08% OKE 3 5 −0.06% +0.00% SCHV 6 6 +0.07% +0.07% DRR 6 8 −0.38% −0.83% OUTD 4 9 +0.03% −0.03% ATML 9 9 +0.15% +0.15% TNA 0 5 +0.00% −1.88% GGG 2+ 2+ +0.44% +0.44% (avg) 11 24 0.25% 0.13%

New Rule: buy when ITA > 20 and MACD > 0.1 and both say "buy"; sell when either one says "sell".  Exception: DRETF, because it's too difficult to trade that stock on short notice. Plus sign for "hold days" means I'm still holding it.  Comma means I would have bought & sold multiple times.  Zero means I never would have bought it. A year has 260 business days, so my IRA needs to gain 0.04% on an average day to reach 10% overall gain per year.  Assuming I hold a stock for around 10 days and then have to wait three days until I can buy another, and that perhaps 10% of the account’s money is typically idle, the average stock investment needs to gain 0.06%/day in order for the account to reach 10%/year. The (avg) line excludes RYOCX, because I held it for a ridiculously long time, and VWO and the second TNA because I shouldn’t have bought them.  The “Gain per day” averages are weighted by number of days held.  Without the exclusion of TNA, my actual average gain is only 0.10%, which is arguably good enough but I want more profits with less aggravation.

Executive summary: I'm holding stocks for twice as long as I should and getting only half as much profit as I could.

shadowcub67 reminds me that I should visit the Motley Fool.  I used to like that website back in the 90's, before they starting plastering it with ads for their paid newsletters.  But after 18 years they must be doing something right, so I should give them another try.