My decision to sell PICK.  Was it unwise?  Only time will tell.

The figure above shows around when I bought shares and the last point shows my exit point for several of the shares bought. 

PICK is the stock symbol for iShares MSCI Global Metals & Mining Producers ETF.  Its current value as of yesterday’s close was $32.57, and its one-year total return is 27%.   However, its historical returns are negative – see below.

I choose to purchase PICK for the fund because its stock price was at a low and produced high dividends.  To make my decision to sell PICK, I used my portfolio control algorithm, implemented in a Google Sheet, to make the decision for me.  My assumptions are a 50% probability that the stock may go up/down, and that I have a max to initially invest of $1600 in PICK – and I want to make a decision once a month.  The algorithm is investment conservative – e.g., avoid losses. See figure below which compares the average return of the conservative method verse a lump sum investment in PICK.   

The algorithm running on historical data made the following buy/sell decisions.  

Date	Decision	Shares / Total	Portfolio Value / Cash
09/01/2015	Buy	42  / 42	$1600 / $809
01/01/2016	Buy	8  / 50	$1439 / $703
04/01/2016	Sell	6  / 44	$1820 / 708
11/1/2016	Sell	7 / 37	$2047 / 872
01/01/2017	Sell	4 / 33	$2168 / 1077

Based on this analysis, I decided to sell several shares to reach 33 shares in my fund’s holding.  I still have fractions of shares in this account.  Therefore, I will continue with dividend reinvest with PICK until I approximate an even share amount.