How to protect a Stock you still want to own from a downturn?
"If you really believe in the particular stocks, then don't worry about their daily price.  Overall if the company is sound, and presumably paying a dividend, then you're in it for the long haul. Notwithstanding that, it is reasonable to look for a way out.  The two you describe are quite different in their specifics. Selling sounds like the simpler of the two, but the trigger event, and if it is automatic or ""manual"" matters.  If you are happy to put in a sell order at some time in the future, then just go ahead with that. Many brokers can place a STOP order, that will trigger on a certain price threshold being hit.  Do note, however, that by default this would place a market order, and depending on the price that breaks through, in the event of a flash crash, depending on how fast the brokers systems were, you could find yourself selling quite cheaply. A STOP LIMIT order will place a limit order at a triggered price.  This would limit your overall downside loss, but you might not sell at all if the market is really running away. Options are another reasonable way to deal with the situation, sort of like insurance.  In this case you would likely buy a PUT, which would give you the right, but not the obligation to sell the stock at the price the that was specified in the option.  In this case, no matter what, you are out the price of the option itself (hence my allusion to insurance), but if the event never happens then that was the price you paid to have that peace of mind. I cannot recommend a specific course of action, but hopefully that fleshed out the options you have." Adding on to all the fine answers, you can consider selling a covered call. You will have to own a minimum of 100 shares. It will offer a bit of protection, but limit your upside. If your confident long term, but expect a broader market pull back then a covered call might give you that small protection your looking for. "Of the two, an option is a more reliable but more expensive means to get rid of a stock. As sdg said, a put option is basically an insurance policy on the stock; you pay a certain price for the contract itself, which locks in a sale price up to a particular future date. If the stock depreciates significantly, you exercise the option and get the contract price; otherwise you let the contract expire and keep the stock. Long-term, these are bad bets as each expired contract will offset earnings, but if you foresee a near-term steep drop in the stock price but aren't quite sure, a put option is good peace of mind. A sell stop order is generally cheaper, but less reliable. You set a trigger price, say a loss of 10% of the stock's current value. If that threshold is reached, the stop order becomes a sell order and the broker will sell the stock on the market, take his commission (or a fixed price depending on your broker) and you get the rest. However, there has to be a buyer willing to buy at that price at the moment the trigger fires; if a stock has lost 10% rapidly, it's probably on the way down hard, and the order might not complete until you realize a 12% loss, or a 15%, or even 20%. A sell stop limit (a combination stop order and limit order) allows you to say that you want to sell if the stock drops to $X, but not sell if it drops below $X-Y. This allows you to limit realized losses by determining a band within which it should be sold, and not to sell above or below that price. These are cheaper because you only pay for the order if it is executed successfully; if you never need it, it's free (or very cheap; some brokers will charge a token service fee to maintain a stop or stop limit). However, if the price drops very quickly or you specify too narrow a band, the stock can drop through that band too quickly to execute the sell order and you end up with a severely depreciated stock and an unexercised order. This can happen if the company whose stock you own buys another company; VERY quickly, both stocks will adjust, the buying company will often plummet inside a few seconds after news of the merger is announced, based on the steep drop in working capital and/or the infusion of a large amount of new stock in the buying company to cover the equity of the purchased company. You end up with devalued stock and a worthless option (but one company buying another is not usually reason to sell; if the purchase is a good idea, their stock will recover). Another option which may be useful to you is a swaption; this basically amounts to buying a put option on one financial instrument and a call on another, rolled into one option contract specifying a swap. This allows you to pick something you think would rise if your stock fell and exchange your stock for it at your option. For example, say the stock on which you buy this swaption is an airline stock, and you contract the option to swap for oil. If oil surges, the airline's stock will tank sharply, and you win both ways (avoiding loss and realizing a gain). You'd also win if either half of this option realized a gain over the option price; oil could surge or the airline could tank and you could win. You could even do this ""naked"" since its your option; if the airline's stock tanks, you buy it at the crashed price to exercise the option and then do so. The downside is a higher option cost; the seller will be no fool, so if your position appears to be likely, anyone who'd bet against you by selling you this option will want a pretty high return."
"Remind yourself that markets recover, usually within a few years. If you believe this and can remind yourself of this, you will be able to see the down cycles of the market as an opportunity to buy stock ""on sale"". No one knows the future, so many people have found investing on a regular schedule to be helpful. By putting in the same amount of money each period, you will end up buying fewer shares when the market is up, and more when it is down. As long as your time horizon is appropriate, you should be able to wait out the ups and downs. Stocks are volatile by their very nature, so if you find that you are very concerned by this, you might want to consider whether you should adjust the amount of risk in your investments, since over time, most people lose money by trying to ""time"" the market. However, if your investment goals and requirements haven't changed, there likely isn't any need to change the types of assets you are investing in, as what you are choosing to invest in should depend on your personal situation. Edit: I am assuming you want to be a long-term investor and owner, making money by owning a portion of companies' profits, and not by trading stocks and/or speculation." If your gut told you to buy during the depths of '09, your gut might be well-calibrated. The problem is stock market declines during recessions are frequently not that large relative to the average long run return of 9%:  A better strategy might be hold a percentage in equities based upon a probability distribution of historical returns.  This becomes problematic because of changes in the definition of earnings and the recent inflation stability which has encouraged high valuations:  Cash flow has not been as corrupted as earnings now, and might be a better indicator:  This obviously isn't perfect either, but returns can be improved. Since there is no formulaic way yet conventionally available, the optimal primary strategy is still buy & hold which has made the most successful investor frequently one of the richest people on the planet for decades, but this could still be used as an auxiliary for cash management reserves during recessions once retired. "You should only invest in individual stocks if you truly understand the company's business model and follow its financial reports closely.  Even then, individual stocks should represent only the tiniest, most ""adventurous"" part of your portfolio, as they are a huge risk. A basic investing principle is diversification.  If you invest in a variety of financial instruments, then: (a) when some components of your portfolio are doing poorly, others will be doing well.  Even in the case of significant economic downturns, when it seems like everything is doing poorly, there will be some investment sectors that are doing relatively better (such as bonds, physical real estate, precious metals). (b) over time, some components of your portfolio will gain more money than others, so every 6 or 12 months you can ""rebalance"" such that all components once again have the same % of money invested in them as when you began.  You can do this either by selling off some of your well-performing assets to purchase more of your poorly-performing assets or (if you don't want to incur a taxable event) by introducing additional money from outside your portfolio.  This essentially forces you to ""buy (relatively) low, sell (relatively) high"". Now, if you accept the above argument for diversification, then you should recognize that owning a handful (or even several handfuls) of individual stocks will not help you achieve diversification.  Even if you buy one stock in the energy sector, one in consumer discretionary, one in financials, etc., then you're still massively exposed to the day-to-day fates of those individual companies.  And if you invest solely in the US stock market, then when the US has a decline, your whole portfolio will decline.  And if you don't buy any bonds, then again when the world has a downturn, your portfolio will decline.  And so on ... That's why index mutual funds are so helpful.  Someone else has already gone to the trouble of grouping together all the stocks or bonds of a certain ""type"" (small-cap/large-cap, domestic/foreign, value/growth) so all you have to do is pick the types you want until you feel you have the diversity you need.  No more worrying about whether you've picked the ""right"" company to represent a particular sector.  The fewer knobs there are to turn in your portfolio, the less chance there is for mistakes!" Short selling can be a good strategy to hedge, but you have almost unlimited downside.  If a stock price skyrockets, you may be forced to cover your short by the brokerage before you want to or put up more capital. A smarter strategy to hedge, that limits your potential downside is to buy puts if you think the market is going down.  Your downside is limited to the total amount that you purchased the put for and no more. Another way to hedge is to SELL calls that are covered because you own the shares the calls refer to.  You might do this if you thought your stock was going to go down but you didn't want to sell your shares right now.  That way the only downside if the price goes up is you give up your shares at a predetermined price and you miss out on the upside, but your downside is now diminished by the premium you were paid for the option. (You'd still lose money if the shares went down since you still own them, but you got paid the option premium so that helps offset that). "If you're asking this question, you probably aren't ready to be buying individual stock shares, and may not be ready to be investing in the market at all.  Short-term in the stock market is GAMBLING, pure and simple, and gambling against professionals at that. You can reduce your risk if you spend the amount of time and effort the pros do on it, but if you aren't ready to accept losses you shouldn't be playing and if you aren't willing to bet it all on a single throw of the dice you should diversify and accept lower potential gain in exchange for lower risk. (Standard advice: Index funds.)  The way an investor, as opposed to a gambler, deals with a stock price dropping -- or surging upward, or not doing anything! -- is to say ""That's interesting. Given where it is NOW, do I expect it to go up or down from here, and do I think I have someplace to put the money that will do better?"" If you believe the stock will gain value from here, holding it may make more sense than taking your losses.  Specific example: the mortgage-crisis market crash of a few years ago. People who sold because stock prices were dropping and they were scared -- or whose finances forced them to sell during the down period -- were hurt badly. Those of us who were invested for the long term and could afford to leave the money in the market -- or who were brave/contrarian enough to see it as an opportunity to buy at a better price -- came out relatively unscathed; all I have ""lost"" was two years of growth. So: You made your bet. Now you have to decide: Do you really want to ""buy high, sell low"" and take the loss as a learning experience, or do you want to wait and see whether you can sell not-so-low. If you don't know enough about the company to make a fairly rational decision on that front, you probably shouldn't have bought its stock." The risk of the particular share moving up or down is same for both.   however in terms of mitigating the risk, Investor A is conservative on upside, ie will exit if he gets 10%, while is ready to take unlimited downside ... his belief is that things will not go worse .. While Investor B is wants to make at least 10% less than peak value and in general is less risk averse as he will sell his position the moment the price hits 10% less than max [peak value] So it more like how do you mitigate a risk, as to which one is wise depends on your belief and the loss appetite "Which is one reason why I don't sell stock until I need to. A couple months ago, my largest index fund investment dropped pretty hard, and I just said ""well, I'll just wait for it to come up again.""" you can start by realizing you usally don't lose permenantly investing, the stock may go down temporarily, but unless the stock is absolute shit it will be worth A LOT more 5 years from now, and will bounce back pretty soon, you only lose if you buy high and then SELL low If you believe the stock market will be down 20-30% in the next few months, sell your stock holdings, buy a protective put option for the value of the holdings that you want to keep. That would be hedging against it. Anything more is speculating that the market will fall. "Of course, but that's not relevant to my example. Let me clarify: say you hold a highly-appreciated $10M position in AAPL and you have good reason to believe the next iPhone is going to be a flop, causing the stock to decline 20%. You can sell now to avoid the (probable) decline, but by doing so you will be left with, let's say, $6.67M after paying $3.33M of state and federal LTCG taxes on the appreciation ($9M of the $10M, because you bought a long time ago).  However, by simply doing nothing and ""eating"" the 20% decline, you'll end up with $8M instead of $6.67M.  Many economists would criticize the tax in this example, as it has led to the investor rationally suffering a $2M loss, instead of reallocating all $10M of his/her capital to a more promising enterprise. Furthermore, if/when many investors act that way, they can create inefficiency in the equity markets (prices not declining by as much as they should to reflect a firm's reduced prospects)." "I understand you make money by buying low and selling high. You can also make money by buying high and selling higher, short selling high and buying back low, short selling low and buying back even lower. An important technique followed by many technical traders and investors is to alway trade with the trend - so if the shares are trending up you go long (buy to open and sell to close); if the shares are trending down you go short (sell to open and buy to close). ""But even if the stock price goes up, why are we guaranteed that there is some demand for it?""  There is never any guarantees in investing or trading. The only guarantee in life is death, but that's a different subject. There is always some demand for a share or else the share price would be zero or it would never sell, i.e zero liquidity. There are many reasons why there could be demand for a rising share price - fundamental analysis could indicated that the shares are valued much higher than the current price; technical analysis could indicate that the trend will continue; greed could get the better of peoples' emotion where they think all my freinds are making money from this stock so I should buy it too (just to name a few). ""After all, it's more expensive now."" What determines if a stock is expensive? As Joe mentioned, was Apple expensive at $100? People who bought it at $50 might think so, but people who bought at $600+ would think $100 is very cheap. On the other hand a penny stock may be expensive at $0.20. ""It would make sense if we can sell the stock back into the company for our share of the earnings, but why would other investors want it when the price has gone up?"" You don't sell your stocks back to the company for a share of the earnings (unless the company has a share-buy-back arrangement in place), you get a share of the earnings by getting the dividends the company distributes to shareholders. Other investor would want to buy the stock when the price has gone up because they think it will go up further and they can make some money out of it. Some of the reasons for this are explained above." I've read a nice rule of thumb somewhere that you should consider: You should invest (100-YOURAGE)% of your money in stock The rest should be something less volatile and more liquid, so you have some money when the stock market goes down and you need some money nevertheless. So you would start with buying about 75% stock and balance your stock percentage over time by buing more secure assets to keep the stock percentage at the desired level. At some time you might need to  sell stock to rebalance and invest in more secure assets. "Aganju has mentioned put options, which are one good possibility. I would suggest considering an even easier strategy: short selling.  Technically you are borrowing the stock from someone and selling it.  At some point you repurchase the stock to return to the lender (""covering your short"").  If the stock price has fallen, then when you repurchase it, it will be cheaper and you keep the profit. Short selling sounds complicated but it's actually very easy--your broker takes care of all the details.  Just go to your brokerage and click ""sell"" or ""sell short.""  You can use a market or limit order just like you were selling something you own.  When it sells, you are done.  The money gets credited to your account.  At some point (after the price falls) you should repurchase it so you don't have a negative position any more, but your brokerage isn't going to hassle you for this unless you bought a lot and the stock price starts rising.  There will be limits on how much you can short, depending on how much money is in your account.  Some stocks (distressed and small stocks) may sometimes be hard to short, meaning your broker will charge you a kind of interest and/or may not be able to complete your transaction. You will need a margin account (a type of brokerage account) to either use options or short sell.  They are easy to come by, though. Note that for a given amount of starting money in your account, puts can give you a much more dramatic gain if the stock price falls.  But they can (and often do) expire worthless, causing you to lose all money you have spent on them.  If you want to maximize how much you make, use puts.  Otherwise I'd short sell. About IPOs, it depends on what you mean.  If the IPO has just completed and you want to bet that the share price will fall, either puts or short selling will work.  Before an IPO you can't short sell and I doubt you would be able to buy an option either. Foreign stocks?  Depends on whether there is an ADR for them that trades on the domestic market and on the details of your brokerage account.  Let me put it this way, if you can buy it, you can short sell it." "Nobody has a ""crash proof"" portfolio -- you can make it ""crash resistant"". You protect against a crash by diversifying and not reacting out of fear when the markets are down. Be careful about focusing on the worst possible scenario (US default) vs. the more likely scenarios. Right now, many people think that inflation and interest rates are heading up -- so you should be making sure that your bond portfolio is mostly in short-duration bonds that are less sensitive to rate risk. Another risk is opportunity cost. Many people sold all of their equities in 2008/2009, and are sitting on lots of money in cash accounts. That money is ""safe"", but those investors lost the opportunity to recoup investments or grow -- to the tune of 25-40%." "This is a really bad idea. You are asking to be forced to pay for something at a time when you most likely NOT want to buy it. Why? There is no stability (much less any degree of predictability) to give up the right to control when and for how much you would be willing to own the S&P500. Just don't do it.....""generate stable income"" and ""selling puts"" is an oxymoron.  ===retired investment advisor"