The Personal Portfolio (and Why I Sold Apple)
Reconciling a buy and hold strategy in a period of large portfolio turnover.
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.
Shoutout to Koyfin for their data and charts. Koyfin has become an integral part of how I screen for, track, and analyze companies. It has made the analysis process much faster thanks to having a decade of data at my fingertips instead of manually going through stacks of quarterly and annual filings.
Up your analysis process by Signing up for Koyfin. Click on the link below and receive 10% off your annual subscription.
