To have a pre-disposition to buy and hold stocks for the long-term can be an extremely expensive frame of mind. The long-term market trend is up, but in a volatile stock market, the long-term gain is often laden with risk and not nearly as great as many short-term gains. Risk vs. return has greatly increased for the long-term stock market investor. People argue that tax consequences are their reason for holding. That argument lacks weight. It is very difficult for some people to break away from old habits and patterns of thinking about the stock market. Those who are unwilling to learn from market crashes are doomed to repeat the lesson.

A few years ago, investors were told that to buy and hold for the long-term was the wise course of action for investors because the long-term trend of the market is up. If you took any other approach, you were a speculator at best and a gambler at worst. Brokers and mutual fund managers were the most vocal proponents of this investment philosophy. The media also joined the chorus and the concept became a part of the "accepted" market lore. Investor thinking, in this regard, lost elasticity. What was overlooked was that selling a stock that has entered a phase of heightened risk actually reduces portfolio risk, whether it has been held a year or not. It is important for us to have clarity about the main issues relating to the length of an investor's holding period.

The new volatility of the market is probably here to stay. The current reality of the market is that in a given year stocks will often undergo multiple price swings in which the magnitude of those short-term swings is often equal to or greater than the magnitude of its 1-year price movement. Even stocks that lose money if held for a year may be very profitable at several times during the year. Unless the long-term expected gain is much greater than the average return on stock investments, it is a high-risk gamble to retain a stock that has moved up 20% in only 2 months once its charted growth rate has started to show signs of breaking down. The probability is that holding on to such a stock to meet a 1-year long-term tax requirement will cost way too much. When stocks move up rapidly, it is common for them to vigorously and abruptly "correct" to the downside once they begin to break down. It's like a crowded auditorium in which someone yells, "fire!" Everyone wants out at once. Potential buyers then become like those outside the auditorium waiting to get in. When they see all the people rushing out in a panic, they naturally decide to wait and watch rather than entering. Thus, while the potential buyers wait, the stock plummets.

The potential reduction in the investor's tax rate resulting from a long-term holding period is not sufficient to make up for the substantial risk of loss. If you have a 20% gain, why not take it rather than lose it? Selling in less than a year is fairly easy to justify under these conditions. Though the figures can vary depending on how you file, even at the highest tax rate it would still make more sense to sell under such circumstances (tax rates may be somewhat different when you read this but the point remains the same). For example, even if your income were $500,000 a year and you had no deductions, 3 short-term gains of $18,000 or 2 of $27,000 would net you more after taxes than one long-term gain of $40,000 taxed at 15%, regardless of how you file. That is, taking several small short-term gains in a choppy market can be more profitable than hanging on to a stock in the hope of obtaining a larger long-term gain. Furthermore, in an environment where the long-term gain is unlikely to be obtained (and where the gains already achieved are likely to be siphoned off by the market), it makes even more sense to lock in the profits already obtained once a stock begins to break down.

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