@Nnyck777, just because gullible is not a sensible investing strategy, doesn't mean it can't work.

I've had the strangest journey with 3DP...

It's been one of the worst businesses I've owned but one of the biggest winners I have had, 99% of which was down to dumb luck and I will claim 1% skill.

@Strawman mentioned this stock at a conference before COVID so I checked it out and put it on my watch list. I bought him a schooner to say thanks for this some time later but should have really bought him a pallet.

In the COVID crash I felt like I knew exactly what to do so I was quite active in selling 'lower risk' businesses that were down 20%+ and buy up 'higher risk' businesses that were down 50%+.

So I exited REA, etc and bought 3DP, etc thinking that this might take a year or 2 to play out but as long as no COVID specific risks were apparent to me, this approach could really pay off.

When I looked at 3DP, I remember sitting until close to midnight one night going through as much as I could find on it and couldn't really fault it in terms of what I was looking for. I ended up with a total of 1m shares at 2.5c per share. This 25k position just started climbing and climbing and was the best performing share one of those years.

Needless to say my near perfect entry was accompanied by less than less than perfect position size management but I still managed to 10x my money in a few short years.

Pretty sure I didn't learn the best lessons from this one but my biggest takeaway was when the @Strawman speaks, it pays to listen!

ha! nice of you to say @Slomo but there's less to be proud of in terms in how long it took me to finally let go of Pointerra.

Fortunately (or luckily) enough I did sell a bunch during that massive Bevan Slattery inspired pump, with shares going from ~4c to ~80c. Although it didnt feel that way at the time as shares kept rocketing higher after every sell. Actually, looking at the trade history on Strawman, which was roughly what i was doing irl, I sold the biggest chunks in the 20c range, and then saw it 3-4x higher.. :(

Sure, in retrospect, it was a good move. And overall my money weighted return was 93%pa since 2019 -- just to modestly slip that in ;) -- but the truth is there was a lot of luck involved and I held my remaining shares for far too long. Worse, I bought more on the way down. Having reached 80c, i started buying back in between 40c-19c, before finally capitulating the last parcel at a low of 3.6c.

As @Nnyck777 said, it's a tough hold. And I should have been smart enough to recognize my initial good fortune and leave well enough alone. The returns would have been *insanely* better.

All that said, I do keep a bit of an eye on Pointerra. The tech is legit in my mind, in that it delivers real world value and in a superior way. If ever they get to some kind of escape velocity in terms of cash flows, I would very much take a closer look.

@Strawman I'm interested in your thoughts and that of others on this thinking:

When a stock is clearly being pupmed as you described with Pointerra going to 80c is this a good opportunity to use a trailing stop loss if you are looking to get out as close to the top as possible? It is impossible to know how high the market will irrationally pump the share price. Just as happened with Droneshield recently when it was pumped to $2.30. At that thie I sold out at 90c because I though the market was being irrational then. I obiviously underestimated just how cuckoo the market would be. Had I used a trailing stop loss I would not have left so much on the table.

Normally I don't like stop losses (see here)

They can definitely work out in some situations, like the one you describe @Shapeshifter, but as I show in that piece you can still be stopped out during a big pump.

Still, if you are happy to sell anyway and you want to leave open the door for a bit more of a gain, it's not the worst thing you could do. Just be aware there is the risk shares are suspended (and not for good reasons), or shares have a big gap down. Although, granted, in most situations that might be unlikely.

Personally I just prefer to sell manually when I think the price is too good not to, even if it's just partially and/or for portfolio weighting reasons (even though I know through brutal experience that that's usually the time at which shares rally another 30% haha)

Thanks @Strawman your article has valid points all well made.

However I am talking about a specific use case only: one where the share price is heading up because of pump and you want to sell. My online broker account will set a trailing stop loss order at 3 price steps below the best bid price at the time the order is processed to prevent gaping down.

Setting a trailing stop loss if you don't want to sell surrenders too much control.