You don't necessarily have to sell your winners. You can just add new money to your "losers". You also don't have to add money to losers you don't want to. If you own oil stocks and you aren't comfortable adding more to them while they are down right now, don't. Maybe contribute new money to undervalued companies you don't currently own and industries or countries you are underweight in. And don't partially sell winners if you think they are still good values. If you owned Google and thought it still had room to increase in price, keep all of it.

You don't HAVE to do anything, just because some people recommend it. It's your portfolio, do what you're comfortable with. The balancing theory is that the companies that have gone down should go up more than the companies that have gone up. Like with Apple and Nortel though, it isn't always the case. Do your research on every stock you own and would like to own and make your decisions based on your conclusions, not blanket recommendations made by people with no stake in how your portfolio performs.

 

IMO the rebalancing procedure works only on broad-base funds. Both of your example is a very small focus in a sector (tech, telecommunication, energy)

It's very easy for a stock of a company to crash and never come back, but the broad market is inevitably going to rise given enough time

 

OK, so a couple of thought.

Yes I don't HAVE to rebalance but not harvesting gains could result in over staying ones welcome. Again, thinking of Nortel.

It seems that using a sector based approach is the way to go. Having said that could one just buy an ETF
with the right sector allocation and let the ETF handle the rebalancing?

Essentially, buy hold and forget.