Do you sell stocks that show profits and hold stocks that are losses? Have you held onto losing stocks for a long time? Quietly hoping for the stock price to rebound to your purchase price? This is just a human cognitive bias. It is known as loss aversion, which means that you would get more depressed by losses than receiving more joy from winning the same amount. This is also one of the reasons why people are interested in capital guaranteed investments. They fear loss and are willing to take much less profits, some times lower than the inflation rate (e.g. fixed deposit). They become irrational, even though their money is eroding as the returns are not able to match inflation, but they still feel good and safe doing it. This is probably one of the reasons why we have boom and bust in the stock market. During a ......