Sold at the Bottom

Red. All of it. Woke up, opened the app before I opened the curtains, and the whole screen was red like a warning light. Down nine percent in a week. Not the market. Me. My money. The money I'd put in over three years, a bit every month, the way you're supposed to. I stood in the kitchen in my pants and I did the maths in my head. If it keeps going. If it's like the last time. If it's worse than the last time. Sell. Four minutes. It took four minutes from opening the app to the confirmation screen. Order placed. Funds available in two to three business days. I put the phone on the counter and I felt light. Genuinely light. Like I'd got out of a car before it went off a bridge. That was a Tuesday. Thursday it was up four percent. The following Tuesday it had recovered everything. By the end of the month it was higher than when I'd started panicking, and I was sitting on cash that had already lost the race, watching a line go up without me on it. I didn't buy back in for three months. Couldn't. Every day I told myself it'd dip again and I'd get in at a better price. It never did. It just kept going, ordinary and relentless, like a bus you missed that turns out to run all night. When I finally bought back in I paid about fourteen percent more for the same thing I'd sold. I worked it out. I wish I hadn't worked it out. My mate Priya, who actually works in this stuff, said the kindest thing anyone said to me about it. She said, "Everyone does it once. The trick is once." So I've done a thing. I've deleted the app off my phone. It's on the laptop only, and the laptop's in the spare room, and to check it I have to physically get up and go into another room and open a lid, and by the time I've done that I've usually remembered why I shouldn't. The money's back in. Monthly, same as before. I don't look. I really don't. Well. Once a quarter. When I'm feeling strong.