My take? The only possible reason for selling (or frankly, even for not buying) here is fear. You may believe the fear is warranted. That’s fine.
I think the reason for fear is lack of experience/education, as well as a slightly different take: Another reason is that even smart, confident people simply think they can call bottoms, which is what believe frequent money moves are about. Non-LTBH investors aren’t necessarily “fearful” when they sell into cash or sectors that are doing better, they’re making a judgment that they’ll lose less/gain more by making those moves. In fact, I’d venture that the people who feel the most stress in a down market are (a) those who get paid to manage money for others and have to answer the phone when unhappy clients call, and (b) those who need to sell now for some reason and stayed too long in risky/volatile stocks. In one sense, those are just two different versions of “playing the market”, or “gambling”.
But think hard. Think about how companies have bounced back in the past, even in hard times.
Not only that, think about how long it’s taken. In “hard times”, I don’t move stuff around much because at my core, I’m still a LTBH investor. I held AMZN for about 10 years and still hold most of my NFLX shares from around 2010-11, as part of my desire to NOT keep all of my stock stuff in SaaS companies. The question I ask when it feels like good stocks are beaten down is closely related to the Indiscriminate Selling concept: “Who has their slingshot stretched the tightest?” Put another way, it could be, “Which beat-down companies are built to not only weather the storm but grow 10x or 100x when it’s over?” One thing history has taught us: what you just told us to think hard about is the north star of investing one’s own money without fear.
-n8 (long DDOG, ZI, ZS, SNOW, UPST, and MDB of those often mentioned here)