I was checking out my Robinhood account yesterday, and I had been holding on to some Clorox stock. If you don't know, Clorox took off during COVID, as they make a lot of cleaning products, and then dropped over fifty percent afterward. This is when I got in, thinking it would rebound after the selloff. It did have a little bit of a bounce, but I held on—and then watched it continue to tank over the last eight or nine months.

So, why am I talking about this? Well, my Robinhood account is mainly for fun. I don't think of it as much more than a gambling account. That doesn't mean I should just forget about some basic investing principles, though—mainly, not letting emotions keep me from doing what I should be doing.

(Now, like I said, this account is for fun. I've done silly stuff, like buying an equity because the stock ticker was the same as the nickname for my oldest daughter. So I guess emotions can have a place, as long as I'm having fun—which is my goal on Robinhood.)

Back to Clorox, though. Clorox is boring. It isn't going to double tomorrow (barring another pandemic), and I didn’t really care about the company. I could have cashed out when it was up twenty percent, but I didn’t.

So what principle did I finally fall back on yesterday? I asked myself: Would I buy Clorox today? Of course not. It's a company that doesn't excite me, and I don't think it’s going to turn around anytime soon. I was just holding on because I was up, then down, and my emotions were telling me that I would feel bad selling now and taking a loss.

Guess what? I sold it—and I’m happy. I don’t feel bad. I’m not looking at a negative number on a stock I didn’t want. That’s the other side of human nature: once we make a decision, our bias is to confirm that it was the right one and move on.

So, the basic stock principle—that if you wouldn’t buy a certain stock today, you shouldn’t hold on to it either—paid off for me. I mean, in my pursuit of fun, I have no idea what the actual stock will do in the future.