Regretting a sale? Calculate what holding on would have earned you

Comparing a sold position to what holding on would have earned means comparing what the sale actually earned you (quantity × sale price) with what those same shares would be worth today (quantity × current price) — in this article's worked example, a €5,500 difference between €6,500 in sale proceeds and €12,000 hypothetical value now.

The problem: sold is gone

As soon as you fully sell a position, it usually disappears from your active portfolio overview. That makes sense — you no longer own it — but it also means the question “was selling actually the right call?” goes unanswered, unless you keep track yourself of what happened to the price since then. One pattern stands out in the conversations we have with users: almost nobody spontaneously looks back at a sold position — until they stumble across the price by chance and feel sick about it afterwards.

What you’re really investigating here has a name in behavioural finance: the disposition effect — the tendency to sell winning positions too early and hold on to losing positions for too long. By structurally reviewing your sale history, you can see whether this pattern shows up in your own behaviour too. Do you systematically sell too early? You’ll only see that if you track it.

The comparison you want to make

A fair “what if” analysis compares two things:

• What the sale actually earned you — the number of shares sold × the sale price.
• What those same shares would be worth today — the same quantity × the current price.

Worked example

You sold 100 shares on 1 January 2024 at €65 each.

100 × €65 = €6,500 sale proceeds

Today the same stock trades at €120 per share.

100 × €120 = €12,000 hypothetical value now

The difference: €5,500. Had you held on, those 100 shares would now be worth €5,500 more than what the sale earned you at the time.

Note: this comparison only looks at price. If the position paid dividends, the holding-on analysis also misses out on whatever dividend you would have received in the meantime — add that in separately for a complete picture.

Why this doesn’t prove selling was wrong

This worked example shows what holding on would have earned — not whether selling was a bad decision. There are plenty of good reasons to sell that have nothing to do with the future price: needing cash, rebalancing to your target allocation, or simply no longer believing in the position. And the €6,500 in sale proceeds didn’t necessarily just sit there — if you reinvested that money, you’d really need to include that comparison too for a complete picture. The same goes for DEGIRO fees: selling and later buying back costs money, which a pure price comparison leaves out.

The value of this analysis isn’t in judging yourself after the fact, but in recognising patterns: do you systematically sell winners too early, or actually at the right time? You only see that once you make the comparison structurally, not incidentally. A sold position, too, can turn out — just like with return contribution per position — to have been, in hindsight, the driver behind your result, for better or worse. Want to look up the price around your sale date yourself? Portfolio time travel can help with that.

How ClearAnalyser calculates this for you

ClearAnalyser groups all your transactions per position into buy-to-sell chains, and automatically shows the annualised return for every closed position alongside the “what if” scenario of holding on — so you don’t have to track that comparison yourself. For the return on your portfolio as a whole, see calculating your DEGIRO return, and for how other tools handle closed positions, see the DEGIRO portfolio tracker comparison.

Sources: academic work by Shefrin and Statman (1985) on the disposition effect.