I watched the chart all day today. The portion showing an unrealized loss felt like a boulder sitting on my chest, while the positions showing unrealized gains always made me feel like, “Wait a bit more— it can still go up.” Losing $10k feels more painful than gaining $10k, and in psychology it’s called loss aversion. Put simply, the brain is far more sensitive to “losing” than to “gaining.” My own strategy for trading is: set a retreat line before entering. Cut the position when the unrealized loss reaches 3%, and only then will the remaining exposure allow me to sleep at night. But even with that rule, execution is still hard—people always hope for a bit more.

The recent NFT royalty flame war was similar too. Creators and trading platforms kept arguing, and when the secondary liquidity is thin, floor prices fall even faster than a waterfall. If you had set a stop-loss in advance, there wouldn’t be as much emotional whiplash. Anyway, once the strategy is folded up, just don’t change the way you fold it on the fly when it’s time to execute.