When a stock of yours is doing well, one of the hardest things you will face is deciding if you should make a decision to take short-term profits, especially if you strongly believe the stock has much more potential in the long run. But it gets even worse. Sometimes we make decisions to hold onto stocks longer than their expiration dates because of the “what if it goes up” thoughts that creep into our minds

You want to hold it, but on the same token, you are not being fair to yourself when your discipline promotes a making-money strategy. 

Now, I could have just as well started this post…one of the hardest decisions you’ll have to contemplate as an investor is to let a stock with great potential sit in your portfolio for a very long time. You have faith, after your hours of due diligence, that it will give you great annualized returns in 5, 10 or 20 years, but what if it doesn’t happen on your timeline?  Would the capital that would have been made available with a more swing-style trade be better deployed in another investment? And should you even preoccupy yourself with these thoughts?