As a part of my 2026 goal of rebalancing my portfolio to something more sane, I just sold my Merck (MRK) stock today. My gains here are more than six figures so I am clearly not complaining.
However, and this subject came up as I was on my Jollibee road trip with this buddy of mine, where I said if I am being completely honest, I don't know which Dumb and Dumber character I was channeling when I bought MRK, because I clearly had no idea what I was recklessly buying into. I barely remember the drug patent that was about to expire, or when, I had no idea what other research they had in the pipeline, let alone what they are called, or how far along and how commercially viable they are. All I basically saw was that their PE was at an enticing low, all the while paying a beefy dividend.
Well, as I joked to my travel buddy that even when one put all their chips on black, sometimes, just sometimes, the roulette ball does land on black! And that's essentially what happened for me here. Yes, this could have easily backfired on me, and only out of sheer luck, not personal skill, did it swing to my favor instead. I recognize that. I recognize that, and that is why I decided to sell it today, because in cases like these, it's best to Quit While You're Still Ahead!
Oh, and I should also mention that this trade was made in my Roth IRA account, if that adds any more shock and horror to it all, but at least it shouldn't cause any tax issues for me from the sale.
This is basically how I feel about this entire thing, though at least I can take comfort in its surprisingly positive outcome:
Now, a rather important question for you dear readers: What do you have in your Roth IRA? Or what do you suggest? Me personally, I'm thinking of buying a good ole index style bond fund and just leaving it alone for all eternity, but I'm always open to suggestions. I'm going to sleep on it for at least a few days while the money is settling and all that.
January 10th, 2026 at 02:59 pm 1768057146
This reminds me, my Dad is a very good stock gambler. After a few, "Oh yeah, I will have a $100K LTCGs" this year when we were trying to slowly convert his Traditional IRAs to ROTHs (while he had no income, age 57 to 74 or whatever)... 🙄 He finally listened to me and started doing all his stock trading in his ROTH IRA. Which admittedly can be a terrible idea for true gamblers. But seemed prudent in this case. Logically, we've always kept our higher performing assets (like index stock mutual funds) in our ROTH IRAs. & I mean, bonds can have better years for sure, but they've had some really bad decades while we built up our nest egg.
January 10th, 2026 at 05:38 pm 1768066739
Bonds are more typically located in your tax-deferred traditional IRA or 401k--you have to pay tax at ordinary income tax rates anyways on what you take out of the fund.
January 11th, 2026 at 12:46 pm 1768135582