There are a plethora of books trying to explain the art of buying stocks but very few that delve into when to sell? This despite the fact that selling is as important or may be even more, than buying a stock. Perhaps it has to do with the whole psychology of investing. The very fact that it so hard to decide when to press the exit button has perhaps made many an author stay away from openly discussing it. But this does not mean that an investor would never be able to master the art of selling . He certainly can we believe given enough experience and feedback mechanism. Like how the famous professor of finance, Aswath Damodaran, managed to do so in the case of one of his favourite holdings. Mr Damodaran opined that he decided to pull the plug on the stock under consideration on account of three major factors. These were the stock becoming a momentum play, becoming an institutional favourite and lastly, becoming a clientele of dividend seeking investors. It is obvious that ...

" The best way to think about investments is to be in a room with no one else and just think. And if that doesn't work, nothing else is going to work. The disadvantage of being in any type of market environment like Wall Street in the extreme is that you get over-stimulated. You think you have to do something every day." - Warren Buffett

The Indian School of Business (ISB) has done a study mining data from the National Stock Exchange ( NSE) to understand how retail investors think and operate. This exercise was massive in scope with the ISB tracking the trading habits and portfolios of 24.6 lakh retail investors who operated in the secondary market between January 2005 and June 2006. During this period, the Sensex and the Nifty gained 60 per cent. It was the middle of the biggest bull run in Indian history. The bull market continued till January 2008. There was no big correction and the uptrend was broad with advances outnumbering declines across the entire market. The sample tracked by ISB made about 140 crore trades with a total value of about Rs 37,00,000 crore ( Rs 37 lakh crore) on the NSE. This included about 98 per cent of all equity trades. In value- terms, the retail segment accounted for around 36 per cent of the market value of all equity trades. The losses for retail investors over thi...