You’ve probably heard it a thousand times.
Buy low. Sell high. Be greedy when others are fearful.
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Makes perfect sense when you’re sitting at a kitchen table on a calm Sunday morning reading about investing.
It makes zero sense when the market is down 12% in a week, your account looks like a crime scene, the news is screaming disaster, and your gut is telling you to get out of everything.
Everyone is a long-term investor until the market drops 15% in two weeks. Then suddenly everyone needs to ‘reassess.’
I’ve been there. More than once.
The dot-com crash. The 2008 financial crisis. March 2020. Every single time, when I was at the level where I knew (logically, mathematically) that I should be buying, my stomach was doing something else entirely.
Because your brain knows what the right move is. Your nervous system has a different opinion.
What Actually Happens in the Moment
Here’s what nobody talks about. When a stock you’ve been watching drops to exactly the level you said you wanted to buy it at, your first thought isn’t ‘great, the plan is working.’
Your first thought is: what if it keeps going lower?
And you know what? It might. That’s true. It could absolutely keep going lower.
That’s why you don’t go all in at once. That’s why I use pyramiding buying in pieces, not all at once. If it drops further, I have room to buy more at a better price. If it bounces, I’m already in.
The plan accounts for being wrong. That’s what makes it possible to execute when everything feels terrible.
The plan doesn’t eliminate fear. It gives you something to do with it.
The Real Edge
I sell puts on stocks I want to own at levels I’ve chosen in advance. Not levels I pick in the moment when I’m stressed and the market is red everywhere.
I decide when I’m calm, when I’m thinking clearly, what price I’d be happy to own a stock at. Then I set it and wait.
When the market crashes and that stock gets there, I don’t have to decide anything. The decision was already made.
That’s not because I’m fearless. I’m not. I feel the same thing you feel when markets drop.
I just built a system that doesn’t require me to be brave in the moment. The plan does the hard part.
Buying low is simple. Not easy. There’s a difference. Simple means the concept is clear. Not easy means your hands might shake a little when you actually click the button.
Click it anyway. Trust the plan you made when you weren’t scared.
Action: Pick one stock you believe in. Decide right now (not during a crash, now!!) what price you’d be happy to own it at. Write it down. That’s your buy level. When it gets there, you already know what to do.
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