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Mark-to-market anxiety

Distress driven by the continuous revaluation of open positions, where a normal fluctuation is experienced as a loss happening to you now.

Continuous pricing means an unrealised drawdown feels exactly like a realised one. A position that will be fine by Friday still delivers the full emotional cost of every adverse tick between now and then.

It is worst where holding period and checking frequency are mismatched: a position sized for a week, watched by the minute. The anxiety then drives exits that the strategy never called for, and the strategy gets blamed.

Match the review cadence to the horizon, size so that the normal range of fluctuation is tolerable, and use resting orders so the position does not require your presence. See myopic-loss-aversion.

Related: p-and-l-watching, myopic-loss-aversion, mark-to-market, position-sizing

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