Good morning, and Happy New Year!

The FTSE100 Futures market looked healthy last night when I went to bed, so it was rather a surprise to see it heavily down this morning, pre-market opening. That means something bad has happened overseas, and sure enough it has - the Chinese market has lurched down heavily again overnight. So we enter 2016 with a 2% fall on the FTSE100 at the time of writing, mid-rnorning, not a great start!

Having pondered things over the long weekend, I feel that many investors have perhaps become complacent, particularly with highly rated growth stocks. Many growth companies had a superb year in 2015 - rises of 40%+ were quite common. However, the ratings are now, in many cases, very expensive. So if you look at things fresh today, would you buy that stock at the current rating? I wouldn't, in many cases, unless the company is absolutely trading its socks off, and likely to significantly beat market forecasts.

So I can't help feeling that it might be a good time to take some money off the table, in shares that have had a very strong run in 2015. It depends on your attitude towards short term losses though. Most investor/traders are terrified by the idea of say a 20-30% loss. Whereas what I have observed, is that investors who ride out such fluctuations, and hold the right stocks for the long term, win the really big prizes.

So as ever, "when to sell?" remains the most difficult question in investing. There's no simple answer unfortunately, each investment is unique. Personally I just try to weigh up risk:reward in each situation. If the price looks full, with limited upside, then I'll take some (or all) money off the table - you can always buy them back on any dips. However, if it's a high conviction, long-term investment, then I'll just hold permanently, and ride out the short term fluctuations.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. My win:loss ratio in 2015 was 60:40, which gave a very good overall result. Although I can't help feeling that with more discipline, and fewer impulsive purchases, I could improve that ratio significantly. That's my aim for 2016 and beyond anyway.

It's fairly easy to create a successful strategy. Actually implementing it in a disciplined & consistent way is the difficult bit. Most of us break our own rules constantly, which is usually a drag…

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