No matter how noble the strategy, poor returns are poor returns, and your returns are your record of investing skill.
The counterpoint would be that selling the AAPL shares allowed the capital to be invested in some other venture that had better returns, not the 'nobility' of the strategy.
> No matter how noble the strategy, poor returns are poor returns, and your returns are your record of investing skill.
No, skill is how well you achieve your objectives. If your objectives are not limited to financial returns, then financial returns alone are not a reliable proxy for skill.
You may think it sounds obvious, but that assertion is hugely controversial within the finance / economics fields. The big argument on the other side is that basically no one shows "serially correlated" returns (in other words, people who do well one year tend to not do well the following year, when if success indicated skill you'd expect them to do well year after year).
The counterpoint would be that selling the AAPL shares allowed the capital to be invested in some other venture that had better returns, not the 'nobility' of the strategy.