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> I've now got $800k post-tax cash vs $4-5 million in stock Of course that's true of any investment though. With that $800k in cash, you could have bought any
by stouset 3y ago
> I've now got $800k post-tax cash vs $4-5 million in stock
Of course that's true of any investment though. With that $800k in cash, you could have bought any stock. Including your employer's! And if someone is going to beat themselves up over not holding RSUs ("I knew it was going to go up!") that same logic would warrant putting even more money into company stock.
On the flip side, I was holding on to some ISOs that were very nearly bringing me to my retirement stretch goal. I just wanted to squeeze out 5% more. That was December 2021. Within a month or two they'd dropped to less than 25% of their value, and I lost well over six figures. The rest of the market recovered, my company didn't. If I'd sold instead of holding on for just a little bit more, I'd be retired today. C'est la vie!
- jebarker 3y agoI'm also in the position of feeling regret over selling stock to diversify that I would have been much better off holding on to. Even though I understand why logically I shouldn't feel bad, it feels like I made a mistake. I assume Kahneman and Taversky could tell me the particular mental bias that makes this happen whether you sell and it goes up or hold and it goes down, i.e. it feels more like a loss because you already held the key to the gain. Loss aversion maybe?
- stouset 3y agoI feel like there's some structural similarities to the trolley problem. With hindsight, inaction (not pulling the lever) would have had the better outcome but you explicitly intervened. This is more painful than a similar situation where the default was reversed and where you would have explicitly had to act to buy those same shares with cash.