How to Decide When to Sell Stock

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Julie Asti. I'm a certified financial planner with Asti Financial Management and today's topic is going to be how to decide when to sell a stock. The first thing that you should do when you purchase a stock is have in mind a price that you would want to sell at and usually that would some price, hopefully, above the price that you bought it at. There are going to be certain things that are going to happen in the market based on market volatility, based on analyst ratings, based on the companies coming out with earnings reports, things that may happen to the company that are going to affect stock price. So, before you move into a stock, you should always have an idea of what you would like to sell the stock at. That would be the first goal. Once you decide on a sell price for the stock, an easy way to monitor that without having to look at the stock daily and throughout the day, if you buy a stock through a brokerage firm, a Schwab or a TD Ameritrade and you have a brokerage account, you could put in a standing sell order. So what you could do when you buy the stock is you can actually open up an order that is an open until fulfilled. And what that means is, you set a price and you say I'm going to buy a stock at $20, when the stock goes to $50, I want to sell. Conversely, you can also put in an order to sell a stock at a lower price, meaning you would not want to sell the stock if it dropped, if it dropped lower than $15 a share, you'd want to put in an order to sell as soon as the stock hits $15 a share. So, what that does is it gives you a band, it gives you a high to lock in gains, but it also gives you a low to lock in losses that you can keep an order will stay open with your brokerage account until that order has been filled and it alleviates you having to monitor the stock continually on a daily basis. And you know your set buy or sell, excuse me, your sell high or your sell low order is going to be fulfilled whenever the stock hits that price. This is Julie Asti, certified financial planner, with Asti Financial Management. You can learn more about my firm and my services at www.astfinancial.com."