You can have some great positions but you cannot think of the money as yours until you have either closed out the trade/bet or the market has expired/ended. Even then I am always a little nervous until the money actually hits your bank account.
Let’s talk about a crypto coin called Solana, as I know that some of the All In podcast guys hold significant amounts of it. With their contacts they were no doubt in on the coin at an early stage (i.e. less than £1). The coin hit peaks of £192 before recently falling back to £35.
I could easily envisage a situation where at its peak, some of the All In guys (Chamath in particular) had positions literally worth in the high hundreds of millions. To keep the numbers simple lets say his position was worth £960m at one stage. That position is now worth £175m. It may still represent a huge profit on the initial investment. Let’s say he paid £25m for the position he had. (These numbers are all fictional to illustrate a point). He is maybe showing an unrealised profit atm of £150m but it was £935m at one stage.
It should be pointed out that there maybe reasons why he couldn’t close out. Maybe lack of liquidity, maybe restrictions on selling, happy to keep the position, may have taken some profits, etc. He will be thinking of the £760m loss and not the £150m gain.
I don’t care how many hundreds of millions he may already have. It is so tough not to think about the money lost rather than what you have won. These sort of downswings when you have potentially large gains but end up with significantly less are so tough to take mentally.
From a betting perspective it might be a position you didn’t close out, something extraordinary happening, a bet you thought you had placed but hadn’t, etc.
I still sometimes (rarely) think about Spieth at the 2016 US Masters where I would have won well over £200k+. I didn’t hedge out at 1.11. You can never get back these positions. You have to realise its not to be, you make the decisions you think correct at the time and let it go.
You just have to realise it was never yours and you can never dwell on the money you once potentially had but no longer have. So much easier to say in practice than reality. You have to make sure you don’t chase trying to get it back. Its gone. Have no regrets in this game.
One way to help with these situations is to be very clear as to what you would do in different scenarios when you place the original bets/take the positions. It makes the decision making in high pressurised situations that bit easier.
ProPunting 