A What If Moment and Ford Stock

Even when you have been an investor for a very long time such as I have, sometimes you just miss the boat. It's just the way things go sometimes. Such was the case when I sold off my entire holdings in Ford Motor Company back in January of 2021. At the time I owned 2,833 shares of the company and sold my position for $29,872.98 at roughly $10.55 per share.

Selling my position really had nothing to do with my personal evaluation of the company's value. I have held that the company has been undervalued for decades, and certainly that reflected in its share price over the years.

I believed that as well at the time I sold my position off.

The thing was that at the time I had already held the stock for many, many years. It had underperformed my entire portfolio mostly and I felt like it was just dragging me down. It was, as I called it, "dead money."

Sometime in 2020, shortly after the pandemic hit, the company had made the decision to cut their dividend. At the time it was 60 cents per share. I was happy to continue to hold mostly because I was able to do things with the stock such as writing covered call options contracts from which I was able to make money from premiums, and luckily I got it right nearly every time and never once was forced to sell any of my shares on those contracts.

At the same time I was enjoying annual dividends of $1,699.80. Essentially, although I do not typically track numbers indefinitely, between dividends and premiums earned from writing covered call options contracts yearly, while Ford was essentially "dead money," the stock was still earning me roughly $5,000 or more a year.

And because I still believed in the value of the company, and was being "paid to wait," I felt it was worthwhile despite its performance to hang on. It has always been an amazingly run company—but it has also gotten lackluster attention from investors.

The decision to sell was also in line with my decision at the time to begin the process of pulling money out of the markets feeling that it was time to make some portfolio adjustments, and my goal came to be that I wanted only 40% exposure in the stock market, and began to slowly pull money into cash.

Ford was a strong candidate because it was at enough of a profit to make me comfortable selling it, and because for remaining investments, I just had other stocks I was more interested in, as well as some ETFs, that were performing better, and I felt my attentions focused there would serve my money better than the stagnant position I was holding in Ford Motor Company.

Based on my evaluation of the company overall, long term, this decision did go against my principles of investing. Nonetheless, I was comfortable with my decision.

Fast forward to Ford's share price as of close of business on January 4, 2022, roughly one year to the date I sold my position, and my Ford Motor Company stock would be worth $21.77 per share, or $61,674.41—plus, late in 2021 Ford also brought back their dividends, although they were reduced to 40 cents per year, which would have earned me another $1,133.20 per year.

The takeaway here is that no matter what decisions you make, right or wrong, at the time you make the decision it has to be the right decision for you. Regardless of what the market does overall. You have to be confident and comfortable with the decision you make, and when it does go wrong, such as it mostly did in this case, you also have to be comfortable with that.

That's just a part of investing, folks. FOMO and FUD are things of course. But they should never cloud your judgement when you make any sort of investment decisions. You stick to your principles, you follow your personal assessments and research, and you simply go forward confidently with the thought in mind that whatever decision is made in the moment fits what your strategy in that moment happens to be.

As to where I see Ford now? With the success of the Mach-E Mustang and the recently released Ford F-150 Lightning, among other things including the leadership of CEO Jim Farley, which has been stellar, I think the stock actually doubles in 2022.

Again, I have always believed in the company and the value of its stock. But at the time I sold, Ford was simply not showing me that investors saw in it what I saw in it, and my desire to decrease my overall market presence was just too strong.

At the end of the day I really have no regrets. My portfolio has performed well despite my decision to sell Ford, and despite my decision to decrease my exposure in the markets.

But it is fun to see where it is now and think, "what if?"

Lead image by Porwest of my 2018 Ford F-150 pickup truck just before we were ready to load up for a week in Cape San Blas, Florida toward the end of summer 2021.