First trade done in 2017

It has been a while since I sold any stock.

Today I have sold the Fastenal Co. stocks I owned. It is still a relatively new stock in my portfolio. I bought these stocks in Aug 2015. After selling the stock, I booked an approx. 42% profit.

Frankly, I do not enjoy selling any stocks. However given the run up in the US market, I reckon it would be prudent to trim down my stock holding and increase my cash holdings.

The stock price of Fasternal itself has been on a tear over the past three months plus.

Fastenal shares spike after earnings, hit 52-week high (read here)

The P/E TTM of Fasternal is 29.59, slightly over the stock PE 5 yrs average. Not particularly high, but not cheap either. 2015 and 2016 are not exactly great years for this company.

The good quarterly earning is a welcome change from previous quarters. This together with the US market rally helped to lift the stock price up.

However, I do not know if this is a turning point or one off, and anyway, 1 good quarter doesn’t mean much, and I do not view macro market trends as permanent (I view these ups and downs in US markets as cyclical).

Is the Worst Over for Fastenal? (read here)

Psychologically, there is always this little voice inside me – fear of losing out. eg. what if I sold too early (even after I sold, within the next few minutes – price kept climbing). However, I know I can never anticipate the future.

Opportunities will come again. I do hope to buy back Fastenal Co. at a lower price in the future. It is still a long-term play for me.

I have also tried to sell some of my Sg stock holdings…. typically I don’t actively try to sell. I will just probably try once for the whole day (on an irregular basis). If my order expires at the end of the day (due to my selling price too high), so be it.

There are some Sg stocks which I have been trying to offload as well. I guess their fundamentals aren’t as strong as I hope them to be. I may be off-loading at a loss for some of them (but overall should be a net gain), but I do hope to use these cash to purchase stocks of better-performing companies at the next correction or crash (and also to reduce the pain when the crash does come). Perhaps I might be able to get some good dividend income shares as well then.

The last time I bought any stocks was in June – Aug 2016 period and Jan – Feb 2016 period. Kind of lumpy – I don’t really trade frequently.

I am not in a hurry to sell. The Singapore market is still some way off from its recent peak in April 2015. Not sure if it will ever cross it…. but used to waiting.

The US markets, on the other hand, is another story.

Dow closes above 21,000 as stocks post best day of 2017 after Trump’s speech (read here)

The bulk of my net worth is in these Sg stocks – and if I can sell these, my war chest will increase significantly.

I like to have lots of money when I go ‘shopping’. The last time I check in Feb 2017 (read here),  I have approx. 13% of my net worth in cash. Kind of low. With the selling of this stock, it would just increase marginally. However, part of my P2P loan & Invoice Financing portions are in cash, so this helps as well.