Greetings all. Have been doing a little navel gazing and pondering this question. For traders the answer is easy: on a day to day level at least. Determine what price you bought your share parcel. Determine what price you sold your share parcel. The difference is then your success (or otherwise). Even for traders it isn't quite that simple. Traders also need to consider the time they held those shares [a month, a year, 5 years (for the rare long term trader)]. The quicker a trader can make their money, obviously the better.

But what about the investor, who tends to acquire their shares in several tranches at different times? What if that investor all things going well inside the target investment company and looking like carrying on doing so, has no particular sell timeframe?

In my case I envisage holding a core portfolio of shares that I take particular care to select, more or less indefinitely. I may buy and sell infrequently so that the relative weightings of my portfolio do not get too far out of whack. So that means I do have to assess my sharemarket timing prowess, even though up until now I have found it somewhat meaningless to do so. So the question remains, how do I do that?

SNOOPY