> If a person buys high and sells low, taking a loss, they've lost value. Or have they? At the time they made the first transaction, they valued the new asset h

> If a person buys high and sells low, taking a loss, they've lost value. Or have they? At the time they made the first transaction, they valued the new asset higher; at the time they made the second one, they valued it lower. Right, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But they're experiencing regret because an alternate past action (just holding cash, or buying a better performing asset) would have given them more value now. Of course you can regret any suboptimal action (anything less optimal than buying the best performing asset), but that's not most people's baseline. I think the baseline for most people is holding cash, hence they mostly feel regret when their assets' cash value decreases. Unless interest rates stay low forever, at some point the asset inflation they cause has to deflate.