EDITOR’S NOTE: Got to know when to hold ’em … but I don’t
Imagining myself as the Omnia CEO, I’d probably play it safe and sell for a premium – and regret it later
I find taking a loss — perhaps because I’ve had (sadly) much more practice — much easier than knowing when to cash in a profit.Stop me if you’ve heard this hard luck tale before, but back in 2001 I owned a fair parcel of Naspers shares (acquired, I recall, at around R19). I sold this for a handsome profit at R48 when I heard a young asset manager predicting Naspers would go to R100. I did pretty much the same with Finbond — which I accumulated at between 9c and 12c and then sold off at 28c, 32c and 44c. The scoreboard will show I left a hell of lot of value on the table, enough not to be placated by the market cliché "no-one goes bankrupt taking a profit".Naturally I sympathise with poor Zeder Investments. It has had very little time to bask in the glory of selling its investment in Quantum Foods for a premium price of 500c a share. Next thing Quantum was in the midst of a struggle for control that sent the share price as high as 1,100c (briefly).Zeder was probably the catalyst for ...
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