The goal of the sell disciplines is to maximize the risk-adjusted holding period return. All sell disciplines involve tradeoffs among return, risk management and turnover. Unlike the buy decision which can be relatively controlled, the sell decision poses the greater challenge because the investor can be confronted with difficult market environments; sometimes with alarming abruptness. Even optimal longer term holding periods for individual stocks entail uncomfortable periods of cyclical correction.

In 2002 the firm added benchmark-relative sell criteria to the body of sell disciplines. Also in 2002 the firm instituted a more systematic portfolio construction process by implementing boundaries for being over/underweight a sector/industry relative to its benchmark weighting.