[davem4616]

I've always followed the advice I received when I was in my 20's... "bulls and bears make money, pigs don't"

That's a rule of thumb that has worked for me...when a stock reaches a 20% gain, I usually get out....however if it's a growth stock in a company/industry that I really sense is going to continue to grow, or they pay a really nice dividend, I hang on

With everything that is going on now and with so many unknowns about what may/may not happen between now and year end, we've temporarily pulled all but 7% of our investable assets out of stocks. Today the fund managers and institutional investment houses have so many algorithms in their buy/sell programs that by the time I read about an issue impacting a stock or the market, the big guys already dumped their shares in some other market while I was asleep

We had a sizable cash position sitting on the side before this latest downturn...(pure luck, wife wanted to change her brokerage house and advisor and had cashed out of a 'managed' portfolio in her SEP)...so we cherry picked some nice opportunities, made a quick 14% and got back out of the market. Again, pure luck and will NEVER happen again.