I have to sell some stock...
 

I'm shamelessly looking for free stock advice here.

I have to sell a little stock to raise some cash for school.
Which of these would you sell?

GE
GM
Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY)
Schering-Plough (SGP)
BellSouth (BLS???)



SGP seems to have the lowest rating.

Thanks in advance.

crash

Re: I have to sell some stock...
 

BellSouth, or GM.
Or sell whichever you have the most money in.

Re: I have to sell some stock...
 

I would probably sell BLS or GE and keep the pharmas.

I don't think GM is a great stock either, so you can't be
that far off to sell this instead.

Re: I have to sell some stock...
 

Depending on how many shares you have and how much money you need, you might be better off selling some calls on these.

Re: I have to sell some stock...
 

Under what market circumstances is selling a call better than selling?

Several hundred shares (+/-) of each, don't need much--$10G or so. Low official income (basically 0), so wouldn't have to worry much about cap. gains taxes.

Re: I have to sell some stock...
 

Sell all the others before dipping into the GE. Hang on to it if you can.

-Zeno

Re: I have to sell some stock...
 

Just a matter of what situation you are in. I often sell calls when the stock is running well. Instead of selling it out after a runup, I give it a chance to run a little more with a covered call. If it hits that point I get even more profit. If it goes down I get a little insurance to cover my losses. If the stock isn't running well then obviously selling a call isn't going to do you much good unless you sell a slightly in the money call. Even then, sounds like you probably don't have enough shares to make good use of this strategy.

Do the math and see if you can raise enough selling calls to cover what you need. If you have several hundred shares each and need 10Gs you probably are a little short of what you need, but maybe if you sell calls on all with some close to strike price you might raise enough.

Otherwise just sell the stocks that have run up the most, provided you have held them more than a year.

Re: I have to sell some stock...
 

sell the stock that gives you the best bang for your buck tax wise now or for the future. or throw a dart.

Re: I have to sell some stock...
 

Don't know what your tax situation is. I'd sell everyone of em, take out the money you need and take the money that's left and buy SPY. Several reasons for this:

1. Diversificaiton is better i.e. you're taking no specific company risk on by buying SPY.

2. You'll maximize the reward for the amount of risk your taking. It's easily proved mathematically in portfolio theory that company specific risk can be diversified away and that investors are not paid a risk premium on specific company risk.

Just for fun I went through and looked at the betas for each company according to Yahoo. Assuming you have an equal amount of each stock dollar wise, your average beta is .8068. Assuming your holding period is 10 years and your beta reflects your expected return your most effecient portfolio would be 80.68% of your money is SPY with the remainder, 19.32%, in a 10 year Treasury yielding today I believe 4.01%. An effecient portfolio is where you maximize your return for the amount of risk taken. I realize that buying a 10 year Treasury is probably impractical but you get the idea. You may be able to substitute a fund for the treasury that provides the equivilant return and risk or close to it as I don't know about that. By combining the riskless asset with the risky asset in this way provides the most effecient way to acheive your desired return i.e. effecient according to portfolio theory. If the preceding is unappealing do what Ray said because IMO he's right.

Re: I have to sell some stock...
 

Adios - Impressive. Markowitz portfolio theory, and correctly and succinctly applied - from my understanding anyways. I would like to second this post.

otherwise, certainly sell one that is long-term, assuming a gain and that at least one is long-term. If there are still choices to be made, I agree, throw a dart.