Exit, you can always come back.

It's about time to let this trading cat out of the bag.

Back in my analyst days, perhaps the least controversial ‘easy win’ was taking a stock from buy to hold when the target price was achieved. There was an intellectual purity to this, especially when guided in some measure by valuation. It wasn’t flashy, but it got the job done. True, the world does continue to spin. We often awake to new things. Calendars leap forward for estimates. And news - both good and bad - happens quite frequently. But when selling a stock, or exiting any position, we often get flummoxed by the most basic, simple things. Or so it would seem. It can be hard to take the win. Maybe we always want more. And then when we look back on our portfolios, often within the context of performance reviews or risk meetings, we are at a loss for why the very easy wins get away.

This is a process note. It is a cognitive bias note. It is a valuation note. It is an ‘anti-thesis drift’ note. But above all, it is a “take the win, dummy” note.