Chief’s Official Response to “When Should I Sell _______?”

As this website becomes more and more popular, I am getting more and more comments. Over 50% of these comments are related to the question, “When should I sell ______?”. In order to answer this question most effectively, here is my official response I will often link to when approached with this inquiry.

Given we are all football fans, I am going to compare this question of “When should I sell ______?” to a football scenario in real life:

Real Madrid is playing Barcelona. Gareth Bale asks Toni Kroos, “When should I shoot?”. Kroos looks back at Bale with a puzzled response. He could answer with a simplistic response like “when you have an open shot”. But the question is more complicated than that. How is Bale’s confidence on that day? Are they trying to hold a lead? Is the ball on his strong foot or weak foot? Is he outside the box, or inside the box?

As you can see, the question of “When should I shoot?” is more complicated than it seems. So too is the question of “When should I sell ______?”. And the biggest misunderstanding people have when it comes to selling is that they fail to consider opportunity cost.

• Opportunity cost – the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen

Let’s refer to an example to help us understand:

You are opening Weekend League rewards on a Thursday and pack Ronaldo. He is worth 1 million coins at the moment, and in your head you want to get the most coins out of him as possible. You decide to wait until Saturday and end up selling him for 1.1 million coins. You are excited because you made 95k more than you would have had you sold on Thursday (considering the 5% tax).

However, on the day after you pack him, there is a scheduled POTM SBC for Hazard. One of the major investment opportunities leading up to the event is Vincent Kompany, being that he is both high rated and Belgian. On that Thursday, he was 10,000 coins, and on Friday after the SBC release, he rose to 15,000 coins.

Had you chosen to sell your Ronaldo on Thursday, you would have had 950k. That money could have been invested in 95 Kompanys. Selling these Kompanys on Friday at 15k a piece would yield you 1.35 million coins after tax. This alternative nets you an additional 308,000 coins in comparison to that of holding Ronaldo from Thursday to Saturday.

Now, this idea of opportunity cost applies to more situations outside that of investing. Say there is profitable sniping filter that you are making 10k/hour with. However, you are unable to utilize this method because you have a full transfer list. In this situation, it could be more beneficial to sell some players on your transfer list in order to take advantage of this filter.

This same idea also applies to a situation in which you don’t have enough coins to use the sniping filter. It could be in your best interest to liquidate assets in order to have enough capital to utilize it.

In conclusion, always consider opportunity cost when it comes to the FIFA market. Think about which investment options will have the best yields over a given period of time, and realize that opening up transfer list spots and liquidating assets may be favorable when you come across a profitable trading scenario.

Cheers,

Chief