temperament
Make Peace With Regret
The rule
You will always miss some big winners. Like a bus you just missed, chasing after it in a panic only hurts you more.
Where it flips
Overused, 'just accept the regret' can make you numb, so you never ask why you missed the winner. Then you learn nothing. The fix: feel the sting for a moment, take the lesson, then refuse to let it set the price of your next trade.
No investor catches every big winner. Even the great ones sold too early, or ignored a stock that later grew ten times. Feeling a small sting about it is normal. Nobody escapes it. The harm comes later. That regret can push you to chase the next hot story at any price, just to 'not miss out again'. Or it makes you hold a losing stock, hoping it becomes the one you regret selling. Accept that missing winners is the normal price of investing. Then the memory cannot steer your next buy or sell.
A worked example
Aarvi sold a stock at ₹120 that later reached ₹900. Still hurting from it, she rushed to buy a hyped new IPO at any price, to 'catch the next one'. She lost ₹1,20,000 on a company she never studied. [illustrative]
How to spot it
- ·You chase a rising stock mainly to avoid missing out again
- ·You hold a losing stock because selling the last one hurt
- ·An old 'one that got away' keeps coming up in your buys
Michael Batnick · Big Mistakes