LET WINNERS RUN | BUDGET WEEK

more than half of all shares do worse than cash. the few that don't are usually the ones people sell too early

Did you see Rolls-Royce on Friday? Down 7.6 per cent, its worst day since April 2025, after Safran warned about aftermarket sales. It's now about 26 per cent off its August high.

If you hold it, I reckon the question in your head this weekend was "do I sell?"

I can't tell you where it goes next. What I can show you is how to make that call before the price is flashing red. That's what FINK OS teaches and code FINK10 takes 10 per cent off until Budget day on Wednesday.

In January 2023 Rolls-Royce's new boss told staff the company was a "burning platform". The day it hit the papers, the shares closed at 110p. On Friday they closed at 1,164p, more than ten times the money even after last week.

It never felt like that on the way up. There have been seven falls of 10 per cent or more from a high since then, this one included. And if you banked a 50 per cent gain like loads of people do, you were out in July 2023 at 185p.

That matters more than it sounds. Hendrik Bessembinder and three colleagues studied 64,000 shares worldwide from 1990 to 2020. More than half did worse than one-month US Treasury bills, which are basically cash, over their listed lives. Every dollar of the $75.7 trillion that shares made above cash came from 2.4 per cent of companies.

So if you own one of the few, selling it after one crap day can cost far more than the one crap day ever did.

That's hindsight, sure. Plenty of shares that fall 26 per cent keep falling. Which is why "do I sell?" needs an answer you wrote down before you bought, based on what the price and the business are doing. How Friday felt shouldn't come into it.

FINK OS walks you through building that process, exits included.

FINK10 takes £194 off the £1,940 course and closes on Budget day, Wednesday 28 October.

Get FINK OS with code FINK10

David
Founder, FINK

P.S. The full numbers are in our report Let winners run, including what happened to the ten biggest US companies of 2015 if you sold each one at a 50 per cent gain. Reply "winners" and I'll send it over.

SOURCES

Rolls-Royce fall on 23 Oct 2026 (7.6 per cent, biggest one-day fall since April 2025, Safran warning): Reuters via Euronext, 23 Oct 2026: https://live.euronext.com/en/financial-news/london-stocks-mark-weekly-fall-oil-hits-five-month-high-ahead-budget

"Burning platform" speech, reported 27 Jan 2023: BBC News: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64429451

The Guardian, 27 Jan 2023: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/27/rolls-royce-is-a-burning-platform-that-must-transform-says-new-ceo

Rolls-Royce prices (1,164.2p close on 23 Oct 2026, 1,570.4p closing high on 5 Aug 2026, first close 50 per cent above 110.2p on 26 Jul 2023 at 185p, seven falls of 10 per cent or more from a closing high): Yahoo Finance daily closes for RR.L, analysis by FINK: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RR.L/history/

Bessembinder, Chen, Choi and Wei (2023), Long-Term Shareholder Returns: Evidence from 64,000 Global Stocks, Financial Analysts Journal 79(3): 55.2 per cent of US and 57.4 per cent of non-US shares lagged one-month T-bills, top 2.4 per cent of firms account for all $75.7tn of net wealth creation: https://rpc.cfainstitute.org/research/financial-analysts-journal/2023/long-term-shareholder-returns-evidence-from-64000-global-stocks

Educational only, not financial advice. Past performance isn't a guide to the future. Capital is at risk.