the best advice i didn't take (latest installment)

We are always being given advice. Some good, some misguided. Yet it always seems the good advice never sticks until we have to learn it on our own. with pain.

Advice: Never hold onto stock if you can sell it now for a profit. In the long run it'll make you cry.

This is advice that was given to me - or rather it is my synthesis of someone else's experience. Every time this person held on to stock in the hope it would increase in value, that person got burned.

Well, I am now a believer. Held onto a small amount of company stock on the advice of "market analysts". Now it's dropped on me. -sigh- CEO quit today with a golden parachute. He gets +8 mil to walk. My stock takes a "confidence" hit.

At least Vegas makes no pretenses at being honest. You will go there and lose money in the most entertaining way they can devise. But you will lose.

I could gripe about the shell game the stock industry runs, but the honest truth would be that I am the dabbler who hasn't stopped to learn the rules of the game. I might as well have gone and played roulette.

Anyway, now I know my lesson (fortunately not too costly this time) and I will settle for the small gains. :?)