"Legitimate question.. why not sell?" Yes, Ferda, a good question.
My small amount of AT&T came from my wife's family 11 years ago at about $31 a share. The Q dividend was $0.44 then vs 0.52 now. The shares (certificated) were acquired in several installments over many years. To sell, I'd have to dig out a death certificate and maybe even get a Medallion Signature Guarantee from a bank. Especially amid the pandemic, it's easier and healthier and to keep the stock... for now.
University studies show that stocks investors sell tend to outperform the market, while stocks bought tend to underperform it. Generally holding is the best policy, although, with AT&T, my ability to grab a small tax loss affects the odds. About 52% of the time, trading is dumb; holding is usually smarter, as this (and many other articles) suggest. See: https://www.ivey.uwo.ca/news/news-ivey/2017/10/how-retail-investors-are-their-own-worst-enemies/
"Do Investors Trade Too Much?" Professor Terrance Odean University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business, April 1998.
When in doubt, hold. Even perhaps with AT&T
"Abstract This paper takes a first step towards demonstrating that overall trading volume in equity markets is excessive, by showing that it is excessive for a particular group of investors: those with discount brokerage accounts. One possible cause of excessive trading is overconfidence. Overconfident investors will trade too frequently, that is, the gains overconfident investors realize through trade will be less than they anticipate and may not even offset the costs of trading. By analyzing trading records for 10,000 accounts at a large discount brokerage house, I test whether the securities these investors purchase outperform those they sell by enough to cover the costs of trading. I find the surprising result that, on average, the securities they purchase actually underperform those they sell. This is the case even when trading is not apparently motivated by liquidity demands, tax-loss selling, portfolio rebalancing, or a move to lower-risk securities. I examine return patterns before and after transactions. Return patterns before purchases and sales can be explained by the difficulty of the search for securities to buy, investors' tendency to let their attention be directed by outside sources, the disposition effect, and investors' reluctance to sell short."
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