You can typically get your hands on plenty of investing info when it comes to how to buy stocks. Heck, I'll be the first to tell you, I love telling investors about the best buying opportunities in growth stocks. How I approach buying is very straight-forward: I seek to buy stocks that have powerful fundamentals and are showing signs of intense buying pressure.

Equally important though less frequently talked about is when you should sell your stocks. I know all too well the flip side of smart buying is smart selling. In fact, I devoted an entire section of my book, The Little Book That Makes You Rich to unveiling the traps most investors fall victim to when it comes to selling. For example, rule #1 is to never fall in love with a stock, because it can never love you back. Eventually even the most powerful growth stocks will begin to peak and fall out of favor. No matter how good a stock has been to you, at that point you have to sell the stock and take your profits. So never, ever, let your emotions get the better of you when investing.

I also hear too many investors will use taxes as an excuse NOT to sell. Let me ask you this: Would you rather pay a long term capital gains tax of 15% on a profit or take a loss and not pay taxes? Believe me, I run (Blue Chip Growth so that it takes tax efficiency into account. I believe in being tax efficient, BUT it should never be the sole reason for not dumping a bad stock.

So what should you look for when it comes to selling a stock?

Here are two critical factors I look for when it comes to selling:

1. Selling Pressure. The first criterion for selling a stock is when the large institutions begin to sell and instead of buying pressure, we see signs of selling pressure. This selling often has a Tsunami-like impact and can drive stocks to new lows very quickly. Trust me, you do not want to be in the way of this momentum!



2. Fading Fundamentals. When a company begins to peak we see sales growth begin to slow and earnings growth decrease. Often, increasing competition causes profit margins to fall and the company begins to report earnings below the analyst's expectations. As a result the analysts become more cynical about the future prospects of the business and begin to lower their quarterly and annual earnings forecasts. When this happens, it is time to sell.

Keeping up with a company's fundamentals and selling pressure may sound like a daunting task. Fear not! My team of stock research analysts and I do this kind of work every week and offer it to you FREE. Each week we analyze nearly 5,000 stocks trading on the stock market, and we make the results available to you through our stock-ranking tool PortfolioGrader Pro. All you have to do is enter the ticker symbol of any stock and instantly the buy/sell/hold rating for that stock will appear in an easy-to-interpret letter grade form.

Just like in school, a Total Grade of A is best, while an F is the worst. This powerful tool can you save you countless hours as well as countless dollars by allowing you to see very quickly which stocks are slipping in rank and need to be replaced by more powerful faster growing stocks.

The decision to sell a stock can be a difficult one. With PortfolioGrader Pro you can take the emotion and indecision out of the process. Log on today and see which of your stocks are exhibiting strong fundamentals and buying pressure, and which you need to sell . Remember access to PortfolioGrader Pro is free.

If you're not sure where to begin, check out our special link Top 20 Stocks to Sell Now when you log in. We'll show you the 20 worst stocks on Wall Street right now. If you own any of these stocks in your portfolio, you now know what to do--sell them right away!

P.S. Now that you know how to sell, how do you to pick the best stocks to buy? Check out my article on the 8 fundamental factors I use when selecting stocks.