[[Start here]] → [[maintain your discipline|discipline]] → [[when to sell]] → buying climaxes --- If you are a breakout investor, you often find yourself owning some of the biggest winners in bull markets. There can occasionally be "buying climaxes", late in their runs, where the stock goes parabolic. These can be extremely hard to sell into, as there will be a euphoric craze about the shares, and you are unlikely to time the sale effectively. If you don’t sell, the other side of the parabola can collapse. > [!QUOTE] Mark Minervini > After a leading stock has made a health advance for many months, the price will accelerate and start to run up at a faster pace and a steeper angle than at any time during the advance. When this occurs, you should sell into the rally and nail down some, if not all, of your profits. In these scenarios it can be best to sell into the strength, as the likelihood of rapid reversal is high. Here are some rules of thumb from some very good books that cover this point. * Bill O’Neil[^2] recommended selling a “pending climax top” if a stock rises to 70% above it's 30 Week MA. * Mark Minervini[^1] defined a climax top as occuring when the stock price runs up 25-50% over one to three weeks. Some may advance 70-80% in just 5 to 10 days. * Jesse Stine[^3], more of a breakout value investor, stated “*a good rule of thumb is: the longer the bull trend, the larger the vertical climax move*”. He recommends selling whenever a stock gets 60% above its 10 Week MA any time after the first 6 weeks of its initial breakout, but in a parabolic move, he’d sell if it gets well above its 5 day MA or breaks below it. [^1]: [[Minervini - Think and Trade Like a Champion]] [^2]: [[O'Neil - How to Make Money in Stocks]] [^3]: [[Stine - Insider Buy Super Stocks]]