Forget About Your Purchase Price By Robert Loest About this article: I've mentioned before that I'm not a long-term investor. I'm not a trader either. I'm simply an investor. What brings all this up is that I recently took a lot of profits the first few days of January, but many investors wouldn't have considered them profits. This requires a bit of explanation. The market crash last October and November caught me holding companies I wish I hadn't owned. The metals mining, oil and natural gas exploration and drilling and service companies dropped especially hard. I had taken some large profits before the drop on about half of each of my natural resource holdings, because it would have been dumb not to, but I kept the rest. Big mistake. It would have been an even bigger mistake, though, to wait until I made money on them relative to my original purchase price. In investment psychology it's called "anchoring." We... Or, call us at 1-866-321-TSCM (8726) Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-6 p.m. ET. Outside the U.S. and in Canada, call 1-212-321-5200.

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