Selling winners

When looking to raise cash to buy into a company I admire I often sell my winners as I don't like selling at a loss. But this goes against the wisdom of running with your winners and selling your losers.

BHP Billiton is the only stock in my mortgage portfolio that is still showing a profit! Therefore I was considering cashing in the gain to finance the purchase of Oracle shares. However having just scanned their most recent interim report I feel that rather than selling BLT I want more!

In the second half of 2008 BLT managed to increase its underlying profit by 25% and its cash flow by 75%! With a useful 4% dividend yield and on a very reasonable PE of 11 BLT has good prospects for steady share price growth, especially as oil prices recover and its petroleum projects start to come on line.

So Oracle with have to wait. This one is a keeper!