You either lost money, or you lost time. If you are implying that you lost nothing because you didn’t cash out and therefore can wait for a rebound, then you are going to lose the time you have to wait for the rebound. In economics that is also called an opportunity cost. You have now lost the opportunity to invest that money into something profitable because you have now tied it up in something that is unprofitable. You still lost. You are just too dumb to realize it with this mentality.

Worst case is when people with this mentality ride a stock to the bottom insisting it will just take more time to come back, and it doesn’t. Then forcing the person to lose both the money and the time.

If not having it doesn’t lose you anything can I have yours?

You’re focusing on loss of money while ignoring loss of value. It doesn’t have to be currency to have value, and the value of something falling has an impact on your expectation of realizing that value later.

Your position works better with people treating the expectation of profit as value, and decrying unmet profit goals as a loss.

My mother will factually never be able to retire now. Thats real. Thats something, not nothing. We joke how its a rich people vibe machine but they’ve tied our retirements and employments to this thing. It means something. Believe me I wish it didnt. It hardly did for me I didnt have anything but I am not the sole proprietor of society now am I? Its a group project. A group effort to survive and thrive.