The Personal Portfolio (and Why I Sold Apple)

Reconciling a buy and hold strategy in a period of large portfolio turnover.

Allegory of Fortune, Salvator Rosa, circa 1658-1659, oil on canvas (Getty Center)

These quarterly check-ins on my portfolio have been eye-opening. As I mentioned last quarter, I was a bit surprised at the total amount of buying and selling of stocks I have done in the past several years. It appears somewhat hypocritical to espouse buy-and-hold investing as an individual’s best shot at generating superior returns and then admitting to a lot of portfolio turnover. It is an issue I have grappled with and personally struggled to communicate effectively here.

So, of course, I sold several positions again this quarter.

What was even stranger this time around was that I sold several positions I had held for a long time. Several of them produced considerable gains. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), for example, was my second-largest publicly traded investment and represented by far and away my most significant gain on a dollar basis. The company has been one of the greatest wealth-creating investments over the past 30 years and remains one of the most widely covered and respected companies on the planet. As good as it has been to my returns, I elected to exit my position.

This wasn’t an easy decision, but the decision to exit Apple and other high-quality businesses came down to one reason.

Let’s dig into why.

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