re: I am beating myself up over a bad stock sale

We are in the process of creating a time machine so we can all go back and correct our bad reads in the stock market and crypto.

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Buy ETFs

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Been doing a lot of this lately.

And dont beat yourself up man i had around 10 shares of amazon stock around 88 @ share as a broke college student in 1999 . I sold it for about 100 dollar profit . Well you know what those shares are worth today Moral everybody has those stories. As long as your playing the stock market casino and are not losing your arse then its all good.

Me too, not my worst sale though.

Don't beat yourself up. AMC isn't worth $10. I would have sold too.

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I am beating myself up over a bad stock sale

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Whenever you feel crappy about your situation just realize there are thousands out there that have it a shitton worse than you.

My whole investing life has been safe, slow, and steady. Safe retirement funds through work, a Roth IRA, S&P500 index funds, etc. Crypto too, but with a 10+ year mindset at least so the volatility isn't an issue.

For some reason that I still can't explain, back around January I got a wild hair up my arse and wanted to start doing more short term trades. Get in, make a few bucks and sell, should be easy right? Here is a rundown of some of my transactions over the last 6 months:

GME- bought at the absolute peak. Got utterly pissed off when it tanked that I sold all of it. Bought a teeny bit back at $150 to at least recoup SOME money
BB- This isn't upperdecker's fault in the least bit but I bought BB around $19 bc I was so fired up about how fired up he was. Got so annoyed with the price that I sold when it finally rose from the ashes and got back up to $11
NAKD- Don't even know why, I thought it was getting caught up in the mania with gme/amc whatever. Didn't do a damn thing
WKHS- lost big contract then went kaput.
A few AT picks that I don't even wanna mention. Again, not blaming anyone but myself. I've never been exposed to penny stocks in my life so seeing a price so low is just enticing..it's like "well, it HAS to go up, it's only pennies now!" And I imagine by the time the word is out to the mainstream, it's likely already too late to really make gains at that point. Loser on all

So there ya go. Granted I haven't lost my house or anything, I at least can say I've only put into this little adventure what I'm willing to lose so I haven't been hurt overall financially any. Still though psychologically it's a kick in the pants ha. But I have certainly learned my lesson that I am not cut out for this type of stuff at all. I'll just stick with my decades-long investing plan and forget about trying to swing trade for short gains.

I mean that in a good way.

You’re beating yourself up because you think you should have known. There was no way you could have known. Sometimes you just lose and pride is what’s making you feel like shite

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No one can predict the future. No one buys the bottom and sells the top unless they are lucky. Gotta learn to move on. After accepting this you will get better at trading. If you made money good job. There’s always opportunities out there

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+1

There was this girl named Sara who had a huge crush on me in high school. But I was a junior and a basketball “star”. She was a flat-chested freshman with glasses, albeit cute. I had no time for her puppy love. Years down the road, I learned that she filled out, got contacts and became a model. Oh well…

Then there was the Series 3 Jaguar E-type with a 5.3L V-12 that I could have scooped up for $6500 back in 1993. Passed on it. It would be worth a good $50k today. Oh well…

And coulda loaded up on AAPL with the cash in my wallet when it was knocking on the bankruptcy door. Yeah, passed on that too… although I did buy in after Gates/Microsoft gave them a lifeline. Oh well…

From missed opportunities in stocks, options, real estate, cars, girls… I could go on and on and on. But apart from turning myself into a psychiatric case study, why do that? Gotta be happy and feel blessed with what goes right and try to learn from what goes wrong… and keep doing the walk of life.

Don’t forget to look at stocks that you didn’t buy that have since tanked.

Don’t be blinded by the gamblers mentality where all you hear about are the times they won big, but they neglect to mention the many more times they went broke.

Just something you have to be okay with in the market. Thinking about it and chasing a 10 bagger will only hurt in the long run.

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I legit am having anxiety over it feeling like a dumbass. How do you get through these bad beat moments in investing?

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I am not sure that was a bad beat. You made money. I bought WKHS amid the frenzy about two weeks before the postal announcement and lost what you could have gained had you held AMC. It’s much worse to me to lose what you once had than it is to miss out on what you never had.

Trading stocks can be emotional, though. You have to listen to you mind telling you to be rational when your emotions are telling you to be irrational. I often just remove the ticker from my watch list to try to forget it. I also realize if I make good financial investments they will be successful over the long run regardless of short term wins and losses. WKHS and GME were/are gambling. If you play risky/volatile stocks you better be prepared for swings that remarkably difficult to handle emotionally.

Calling tops and bottoms is a fools errand.

If you are speculating, a win is a win.

If you are investing, look for a sustainable, profitable business to own shares in for a long time- decades.