How to decide when to sell shares

Investors spend a lot of time thinking about buying shares, says John Stepek. But they should consider their selling strategy too.

Investors spend a lot of time thinking about buying shares. But they should consider their selling strategy too.

When it comes to investing in shares, there's plenty of advice on how to identify companies to buy. But there's a relative dearth of advice on the other big transaction involved in successful investing knowing when it's time to sell. This is a pity, because selling too early can be as bad, if not worse, than selling too late. As the FT noted a while ago, even the likes of Warren Buffett are not immune.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.