You’ve ridden the ASML wave from €633 to €1280, watching your position double in value and transform into an 18% chunk of your total portfolio. The gain sits at a handsome 103%, and every financial instinct screams to let this winner run. But that voice in your head keeps reminding you: in three or four years, you need to buy a house, and you’ll likely need to liquidate holdings to make that happen.
This is the precise dilemma facing a growing number of Dutch investors who’ve discovered that homegrown success can become a homegrown hazard.
The Portfolio Concentration Trap: How ASML Became Your Largest Holding
The math is straightforward but brutal. What started as a modest 10% allocation has ballooned to 18% not because you bought more, but because the aandeel (stock) price nearly doubled while your other holdings plodded along. Your portfolio now carries a concentration risk that would make any financial advisor wince, yet selling feels like financial heresy.
Many investors in online communities argue this concentration is justified. ASML Holding, headquartered in Veldhoven, dominates the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography market with what amounts to a functional monopoly. The company’s technology is literally indispensable for producing advanced chips that power everything from AI data centers to smartphones. When your winning position is in a company that counts TSMC, Intel, and Samsung as dependent customers, why would you ever sell?
The bullish case rests on three pillars: technological moat, AI-driven demand, and structural growth. ASML’s fourth-quarter 2025 bookings hit €13.2 billion, more than double analyst estimates of €6.85 billion. The company posted record revenue of €32.7 billion for the full year, up 16% from 2024. With AI infrastructure spending accelerating, the narrative writes itself, hold forever and let compound interest work its magic.
But that narrative ignores a critical reality: you’re not investing on a 20-year timeline. You need that money for a concrete goal, and that changes every calculation.
The “Just Hold” Fallacy and Why It Breaks Down
The most common advice you’ll hear in Dutch investment circles is simple: don’t sell your winners. One experienced investor noted they never sell based on price appreciation alone, only on fundamental deterioration. This philosophy, rooted in the belief that you can’t time the market, has merit for investors with decade-long horizons.
However, this approach contains a fatal flaw when applied to your situation. Your investment horizon isn’t indefinite, it’s three to four years. In that timeframe, ASML’s volatility isn’t a theoretical risk, it’s a concrete threat to your ability to put a down payment on a property.
Technical analysis from Dutch market experts suggests ASML has reached a critical juncture. The stock has approached the €1,200 resistance level, a psychological barrier that has capped previous rallies. While the long-term uptrend remains intact, analysts note that a pullback to the €1,021 support level wouldn’t be surprising. That’s a potential 15% decline from current levels, enough to wipe out €15,000 on a €100,000 position.
More concerning are the fundamental risks that bullish investors downplay:
- AI Bubble Vulnerability: If the AI investment cycle slows or disappoints, ASML’s premium valuation could compress rapidly. The stock trades at approximately 35x 2025 earnings, pricing in exceptional growth that may not materialize if AI infrastructure spending decelerates.
- Geopolitical Instability: ASML’s position as a technology chokepoint makes it a geopolitical pawn. Export restrictions to China already cost the company significant revenue, and any escalation in Taiwan tensions could disrupt the entire semiconductor supply chainASML serves.
- Organizational Growing Pains: Despite record revenue, ASML announced plans to eliminate 1,700 jobs, primarily in management layers. While framed as streamlining, this restructuring suggests the company has become bureaucratic and inefficient, a warning sign that rapid growth may be masking operational issues.
The House Purchase Deadline: Why Time Changes Everything
Your three-to-four-year timeline is the variable that transforms ASML from a hold-forever dream into a tactical challenge. Dutch property prices, especially in the Randstad region, show no signs of meaningful decline. The average home price in Amsterdam remains stubbornly high, and the hypotheek (mortgage) requirements demand substantial down payments.
If ASML experiences a 30% correction, which is entirely plausible given its historical volatility, your 18% portfolio allocation could drop to 12% or lower, but more importantly, your total portfolio value could shrink significantly right when you need it most. This is sequence-of-returns risk in its purest form: the timing of your withdrawal matters more than your long-term average return.
The cash cushion you maintain, 20% of portfolio value, provides some buffer, but not enough to insulate you from a major ASML downturn. If the stock drops 30% and you need to liquidate, you’ll be forced to sell at depressed prices, crystallizing losses you can’t recover.
The Box 3 Tax Complication Nobody Mentions
Here’s where Dutch tax law adds insult to injury. Under the new Box 3 (wealth tax) reforms taking full effect in 2028, you’ll pay vermogensbelasting (wealth tax) on your actual investment returns, including unrealized gains. This means that even if you don’t sell ASML, you’ll face a tax bill on paper profits.
For an investor with a heavily concentrated position, this creates a forced-liquidation scenario. You may need to sell some ASML shares simply to pay the tax on your unrealized gains, exactly the situation the old deemed-return system was designed to avoid but the new system reintroduces in a different form.
The tax implications of your house purchase add another layer. When you sell ASML to fund your property purchase, you’ll trigger capital gains tax (if held outside a tax wrapper), and the proceeds will increase your Box 3 taxable wealth just as you’re about to make the largest purchase of your life. This requirement to sell investments to cover tax on unrealized gains could force you to liquidate more than you planned, leaving you underinvested after your home purchase.
Strategic Options: What You Can Actually Do
You have several tactical options, each with trade-offs:
1. Partial Profit-Taking with a “Free Ride” Strategy
Sell enough shares to recover your initial €633 investment plus a conservative profit, then let the remaining “house money” ride. This reduces your risk to zero on the original capital while maintaining upside exposure. For a €100,000 position that started at €50,000, you’d sell €50,000-$60,000 worth, leaving €40,000-$50,000 of pure profit at risk.
2. Systematic De-Risking
Establish a pre-commitment to sell a fixed percentage (e.g., 5% of the position) each quarter regardless of price. This mechanical approach removes emotion from the decision and gradually reduces concentration risk over time. By the time you’re ready to buy, your ASML weighting might be down to a more manageable 10-12%.
3. Options Collar Strategy
For sophisticated investors, you could implement a collar: sell covered calls at a strike price above current levels to generate income, and use that income to buy protective puts below current levels. This caps your upside but provides defined downside protection, a reasonable trade-off when capital preservation becomes paramount.
4. Full Liquidation and Reallocation
The most conservative approach: sell the entire position and redeploy into a diversified mix of European and global equities, bonds, and cash equivalents. This eliminates concentration risk entirely and aligns your portfolio with your upcoming liquidity needs. The psychological cost is high, you’ll watch ASML potentially continue its ascent from the sidelines.
The Dutch Investor’s Reality Check
Many Dutch investors face this exact scenario because ASML has become the new national champion, replacing Shell as the most popular aandeel among Dutch households. The company’s success is a source of national pride, making it emotionally difficult to sell. This home-country bias is reinforced by constant media coverage and the company’s visibility in the AEX index.
But pride doesn’t pay for a house, and concentration risk doesn’t disappear just because the company is excellent. The uncomfortable truth is that even the best companies can experience prolonged drawdowns. ASML fell from over €800 to under €400 during the 2022 tech rout, a 50% decline that would devastate a portfolio weighted 18% in the stock.
Your situation is further complicated by the Box 3 tax on unrealized gains affecting startup and stock investments. As the reforms take full effect in 2028, you may find yourself paying substantial taxes on your ASML gains even if you hold the shares, creating a cash drain that conflicts with your house savings goal.
Making the Decision: A Framework
To decide what to do, answer these three questions honestly:
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What percentage loss could you tolerate without jeopardizing your house purchase? If a 20% drop in ASML would force you to delay buying, you have too much risk.
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How would you feel if ASML dropped 30% and you didn’t sell? Regret is a powerful emotion. If you’d be angry at yourself for not taking profits, that’s information.
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What would you do with the proceeds if you sold? If you have a clear plan for redeploying into a diversified portfolio or increasing your cash reserves for the house purchase, selling becomes easier to justify.
The investor who posted the original dilemma noted they hold 55% in ETFs (S&P and All-World Dividend) with ASML at 18%. This isn’t terrible diversification, but that 18% concentration is still excessive for a near-term goal. The remaining 27% in other individual stocks suggests further concentration risk beyond just ASML.
The Bottom Line: Action Over Analysis
The Dutch have a saying: “Bijzonderheden aan de lopende band” (special cases on the assembly line). Your ASML position feels special because it is. But special doesn’t mean immune from risk management principles.
You don’t need to sell everything, but you do need to act. The sweet spot is likely partial profit-taking that reduces your ASML weighting to 10-12% of your portfolio while locking in enough gains to secure your down payment regardless of future volatility. This gives you the best of both worlds: reduced risk and maintained upside.
Remember that ASML’s recent announcement of 1,700 job cuts despite record revenue suggests even management sees the need for operational changes. If the company itself is proactively reducing risk and improving efficiency, perhaps you should too.
The housing market won’t wait for ASML to recover from its next downturn, and the risk of tax liabilities on paper gains undermining FIRE strategies is real. Your portfolio should serve your life goals, not the other way around.
Make a decision this week. Set a limit order to sell a portion at a price you’re comfortable with, or establish a calendar reminder to review the position monthly with a dispassionate eye. The worst choice is paralysis while your financial future remains hostage to a single stock’s performance.
After all, you can’t live in an aandeel certificate, but you can live in a house. And that’s the point of investing in the first place.
