Topic: Do you regret when you miss selling at ATH followed by a correction - page 11. (Read 2386 times)

Hello. This is my first post on the bitcointalk forum but I'm not especially new to crypto. Just never created an account here for some reason. Maybe because of my story below.

The short version: Yes, I regret not selling some at ATHs because instead I was buying them!  Im a pretty solid crypto trainwreck. Lol. Hopefully I'll be able to let go of the regrets one day.

Long version:

I didn't read all the pages of replies but in the few pages I did, it seems like I may be one of the few who does feel a lot of regret.

I jumped into the altcoin market about 1 year ago. (8 months before that I was Bitcoin only. No altcoins).  I didn't do proper study beforehand and was swept up in the euphoria of the bull market. I also had made good unrealized gains in BTC up until then before the crash, but selling some for profits was never a thought in my mind since I was taught to just HODL.

As stupid and crazy as it sounds, I started buying all the altcoins I thought had good ideas and teams and lots of potential. I was blinded by "Up Only" and didn't realize I was buying the top of most of these coins. To name a few DOT FIL ETH ADA AVAX BNB MATIC LTC.  I didn't really know how to read charts, what cycles were, and how supply and demand affected price. Nor did I even know the impact whales could have on the market. I came from a traditional retail stock market casual investing background. I was not really even aware of how much BTC and crypto could go up/down in a day! I think the great BTC up trend from May 2020 to Dec 2020 made me think that huge crashes of BTC were a thing of the past, and the MCap was too big for it to go down so hard like in 2018.  I know, dumb. But the BTC I bought in May 2020 just kept going up so I thought I was in the golden age or something.  Who knows.

Anyway, I really screwed myself because by the time I was out of money I set aside to invest, and bought all the projects I liked, the market collapsed very soon after in May 2021. I was devastated and shocked.  Totally got me by surprise.  I couldn't believe how fast and far down the prices went!

Even worse, I was "married" to my coins and thought if I just waited long enough, the prices would touch ATHs again and then make new ATH where I could escape with some profits.

I'm sure you all know how that went!  I held as long as I could (not very long) but I entered max pain (for me) and couldn't hold any longer watching my money melt away. So I started to sell at loss. Trust me, I knew the concept of buy lo sell hi but I was just very fearful that everything was going to zero. The FUD got me.

Yes, I'm the person that bought Filecoin ~$150, DOT ~ $40 LTC ~210 (? I think) AVAX ~ $40.  Then at the WORST time, I sold most of them at new lows. .( I held onto FIL because I really thought it was a great concept & I still hold it today at $18 lol) I basically sold off some of everything.  MATIC at 0.60! I also held SAND MANA LUNA SOL that I purchased for under $1 - $10 but SOLD all 4 off for either a loss or break even. Maybe a few bucks profit.

I regret that I made the classic noob mistakes, and was influenced by media,  and I made the mistakes so badly you would think I had a talent for it!  Guess what happens next??

Yes, SAND MANA AVAX SOL LUNA MATIC all came back of course and went on crazy runs.  And I had next to nothing left holding!  I am not exaggerating when I say I was trading SAND & MANA back n forth for a few months under $1 and the week after I decided to stop because they were "dead" coins, they exploded.  AVAX and SOL I managed to get back in on a little bit but much much higher than originally.

FFWD to today and I'm overall up just a tiny bit in profit. But that's only because of BTC and ETH.  Every small pump I make a tiny bit back, but every small dip I'm close again to being under water.  It's miserable.

So I will be honest and say yes, I regret BUYING at the ATHs and SELLING at the LOWS.  It's embarrassing, demoralizing, and I can't really enjoy crypto-universe since it happened because I'm constantly trying to squeek out a tiny 1.5x or 1.8x in other coins to make up for the severe losses I caused.

It's no ones fault but my own, and I just happened to make every mistake there is to make.  And I still make them!  They are only more complex!  
It's too bad because I'm not a dumb person (I know it's hard to imagine) and I really love to read and study the technology, I've learned so much about everything really, but I can hardly enjoy it because from one day to the next I'm a little up then a little down. I have no padding or breathing room.  And the worst part is that I'm almost sure I'm one of the few ppl who hardly made any profits cumulative between April 2020 and Nov 2021! I was EXTREMELY skilled at not making money.  

I hope I can move on from the regret and scars I have from my bad decisions one day. Hopefully I hold a few altcoins today at decent prices that in a few years maybe I can see some profits. Thankfully BTC is proping my bags up since it's the one thing I mostly didn't touch except for a few good sells..

So if any of you do have regrets, just think of my story and you will probably feel a lot better.

PS- This was not meant to be a "feel sorry for myself" comment. I just had never really admitted all that stuff before, so I figured why not do it as my first post since now I'm POSITIVE I can only go UP from here in reputation!  Hahaha.

Cheers! :-)

This is the same mentality that I have, people worry too much about the ATH and the bottom and they want to catch both to maximize their profits, and I understand them as the purpose of all traders is to buy low and sell high, however as long as we get profits with our trades then everything is fine and we should not let greed take over us, because the moment it does that is the moment in which we will make some serious mistakes from which it would be incredibly difficult to recover.

sell at the peak and after that there is a correction, it means you have made a profit. for me after making a profit there is no reason to regret even though after that there is a correction and after that the price moves up again because there is no guarantee after the correction the price will move up again. Another possibility that will happen is after the correction and you buy but the price continues to fall and you destroy the profit you previously made.

Not at all.... or maybe there is a bit of regret but in the end, I don't know what will be the future of the coin so as long as I'm not at a loss when I sold it then I'm ok with it.

What's important for me is that, I will have profits even though I sold it at ATH or not. There are some investors or traders out there who are sometimes greedy and they are waiting much longer hoping that they can get more profit when they are patient but it backfired against them and their supposed profits turn into dust because they waited longer.

Profit is profit either selling at ATH or not, every all time high is a bottom for some investors this is why we don't have to be too greedy when our portfolio is growing, taking profits is the smartest decision as a crypto investor.

I once skipped ATH because I didn't think it was the highest ATH, which is natural because no one knows where the ATH will be. Regret for sure, but there's nothing to regret, just make it happen experience so that it does not happen again in the future.

that's right, there's no one who isn't sorry here.
everyone must feel regret but what can we do, we can't be sure of anything that happens to the market.
luckily i was able to sell it, even though it wasn't exactly on ATH. but i can still get a pretty high price back then.

seeing your condition, i'm sad too. but believe me the market will get better soon and you will get profit again.
granted it will take a lot of time, but you are not alone. hold on for some time. 

My problem with that is that can lead to a subsequent mistake and that is something that we do not want, even if trading is an incredible complex topic that we could talk about for years and never exhaust it, at the same time its principles are really simple, if you bought for a price and you sold for a price higher than what you bought and you obtained profits then that is all what matters, in my opinion there is nothing to regret as you are fulfilling your goal every single time you have a winning trade, so it should not matter at all if you could not sell at the ATH at the time it appeared.

Yes I feel but I feel only for a minute or two. When I see price dropping then the feeling comes only for a minute or less period of a minute that I missed the ATH but then I tell to my mind that I will not be able to find the rebounded and then at that time I will miss the opportunity and instead of increasing the number of coins I will lose them.

Need a really high dedication and big luck to predict the ATH and we sell it that time. Most of the time people are selling their coins once it get decent profits and the others are holding their coins hoping for bigger profits but with their greedyness the price coming back to the bottom and they got nothing.
So for me personally i prefer the first one

I don't regret it, I make it my experience for a better trading experience in future...

sorry it will only make it difficult for someone to move forward and that is really useless, I do hold a few crypto coins and with existing experience, when the market is bullish I will immediately sell all and then wait until the market is bearish and buy back again.

sorry actually honestly I said YES.
because basically not everyone can read when there will be a new ATH for a certain coin and I think only for the whales who know when they will make a new ATH, and the time is so short
so now I think I can't get a new ATH this year I believe I will get a new ATH that is better than the previous year even though it takes patience

Of course I regret not selling when some of my assets are of significant value between October to November 2021, after waiting almost 3 months many of my coins have not risen but I am still patient to hold, I hope there will be another big surprise like last year which happened in April .

I onced tried a strategy of selling at peak and buy again at bottom.

Didn't work. I miss the train. So I don't do that anymore.

When I was a newbie I really regret when I miss the opportunity to sell at peak, I keep holding my altcoins just to earn more profit but it suddenly dump happens. I learnt myself that I should not be greedy just be satisfy of your earnings..

well, it never hurts to be sorry and take this as a lesson. however, we always aim for big profits, so we tend to wait for the highest price, not realizing that it is ATH. and when the price drops, we start to regret. Well, to be honest I've had this happen a lot, even because of it, I've sold too fast a few times and passed ATH. however, as long as it was still profitable, it wouldn't be a problem. however, we need to learn to sell it at a high price.

I also regret not selling more that month but that's okay because I'm sure we'll see more in the coming months. This moment makes us have to be more patient because we will not get much profit if we keep selling. It's better if we save first and keep waiting for a while.

Yes, that's normal and we don't have to regret it anymore because we still have a lot to do to prepare for the upcoming hike. I agree that we need to research more carefully in analyzing market trends to find when we need to trade.

Of course, there are many people to feel regret if they missed the opportunity to sell in ATH, including me. There is nothing wrong to regret, it is normal, right? Everyone must dream to sell their coins at the highest price, it will hurt so much when realizing the price already decreased so much. I have experienced it many times on various coins/tokens. Now, I want to be more careful to analyze the market trend, so I don't miss again the opportunity.

To be sincere, I do regret my decision not to sell at times especially when the correction goes much lower than the ATH.
One thing I have learnt to help myself from having too many regrets is that I can't win all the time but if my strategy works 70% of the time then it is good enough.
Making over 10x from most coins is something only true holders can achieve and it takes patience and trust in the project.

Yes, I have profited from those sales but eventually the price have risen. If I'm just a bit of patient and sold when that came, I've made more profit.
But that mentality is already adopted by me, I don't look anymore what should happen next after I've sold. That will just make me thinking of it for so many times and even can disrupt my sleep which is pressuring and stressful.