Ease In & Ease Out – How to Trade

If there is something I’ve learned in my couple decades of investing in stocks and decade of investing in crypto is that you should always be easing into a trade or easing out of a trade.

What does that mean? When you talk with people especially more newbie investors they will take a huge position in an investment all at once, or they will blow out of an investment all at once. Many times this ends up being a mistake, “ohhh I got in too soon, now its way lower.” “Oh my gosh after I sold it just kept going up and up!!!.” (of course there are always exceptions to this)

I like to think of getting into or out of an investment as a sliding scale of conviction. When something is interesting and I like it, I’ll take a small position, start learning more about it, and then buy more if it gets cheaper and I still like it, or if I really see the future of the investment maybe buy more on its way up. If things go great, and I think either the position is getting too large for my comfort or the investment has gone up too fast or is now getting too expensive, I start to ease out of the investment, selling a bit at a time. On the reverse, if I’ve lost conviction in an investment, many times I’ll sell a lot of the position but keep a toe hold just incase my emotions have gotten the best of me.

I don’t mean to imply that this method will be the most financially profitable, but it is very helpful mentally. As something goes up and you see that dollar value become important, you get itchy, maybe too itchy, “I want that money!” Well, scratch that itch a little sell some. Feel good about locking in some of that value. Many times things go up much farther than you think possible (the reverse is also absolutely true!), so holding on to a winning investment many times pays further dividends later (both figuratively and literally). Also if you sell a little at a high, and the investment goes down some, you feel so much better that you at least sold a little at that price.

A lot of investing besides the research and following trends is wrestling with your own emotions and biases. Try to learn to tame the animal in you that is very skittish, with this strategy you feed the beast what it wants, just a little, to calm it down.