“Never put in a sell order on the market open or too close to the close, especially for ETFs ,” she says. “Give the markets some time for price discovery.”
Ms. Hagerman likes to look at market technicals such as 200- and 50-day moving averages and follows the advice of her firm’s head technical analyst for the overall direction of the market when looking to rebalance or liquidate part or all of a position.Another technique Ms.
Mr. Burrows notes his firm sets stops at what they see as a inflection point where a position goes from being in a clearly defined uptrend to a downtrend. And when positions breach these inflection points, they choose to exit. Barometer also resets stops over time to higher levels. “I certainly recognize that investors are psychologically primed to want to throw in the towel the deeper the downturn in markets gets, but logically, the depths of a downturn when recent returns have been the weakest is the worst time to exit an investment and is the exact point in the cycle when future returns are the best,” says Brian Madden, chief investment officer at First Avenue Investment Counsel in Toronto.