FOMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
What does this word mean?
Today we’re going to explain a term that you surely read often, but that also has a deep meaning in the psychology of every trader.
FOMO means fear of missing out, and we could translate it as fear of having missed an opportunity, sometimes unrepeatable.
We can also see it as a social anxiety for having missed an interesting and very profitable investment train.
Fomo is one of the many biases working against you.
This feeling that you will feel deep inside will be a mixture of discouragement, anger towards yourself and frenzy to jump on the market without ifs and buts, without thinking and without having any regard to money management.
It’s a feeling that is present especially now in the social media era, thank to the continuous updating of what other people are doing, the lifestyle that the social media of certain characters are selling us and their wealth.
You see on twitter and instagram unknown kids becoming millionaires overnight, driving around Dubai sitting in bentleys and surrounded by fabulous models, all accompanied by articles and pictures of their bank accounts at various zeroes.
And you’re in your bedroom, in your underwear, guzzling a cola. It’s obvious that you want to do what they do and have their lifestyle.
However, this emotion of envy you’re feeling leads you to follow some advice that could be bad for your wallet.
Right now you’re susceptible to those articles in blogs with titles like “the 5 coins you can’t not have in your portfolio” or “XX’s untameable growth” or “expected 200% return with YY”.
To which we have to add all the messages that you read in the various chats, which promote things never heard that in most cases are scams.
And then you enter in the optics that “now or never” on some unknown coin, you buy it exaggerating and you throw away all your past gains.
You don’t have to do that, it’s not a competition and you don’t have to buy things that in a normal situation you would have never bought.
And on top of that you are left with the anger of having thrown money away and you can only take it out on yourself.
This is why we talk so often about managing emotions and anxiety.
If you had stopped to think, none of this would have happened or you would have allocated a much smaller amount.
You’ve gone overboard with your level of risk
Now let’s face it, social media are fake.
They are a mirror of what we would like to be and that we somehow make others see. But that we are not.
When we see these millionaire kids, their success is exaggerated to sell you one of their products.
Most of the successes of those we follow on social are exaggerated narratives.
The cars, jewelry and private planes are definitely rentals and the incredible models are only friends of their cousin or prostitutes.
None of these champions talk about their mistakes and losses but all they talk about are the victories and the fantastic billions they are making. Some even get paid to foment fomo or to sell scams or useless courses or useless books.
Now back to us, generally the rule to earn is buy low and sell high, which is very logical but in most cases if a stock is low, mentally evaluate the situation as negative, if it is high it is positive and you think it will go up again.
This is possible, but what if the uptrend is over?
If everyone is rushing to buy Ethereum after a 200 percent rise, you are compromising your risk level just because you are following the crowd, you are following the hype.
And the hype is the enemy
You’re acting on the urgency to do something and that’s not good because as you know deep down, returns are not guaranteed.
The fomo, the frenzy doesn’t make you think rationally and doesn’t deepen what you’re putting your money on.
If you get caught up in the frenzy to buy after you’ve seen a post on some social, stop for a moment and think
who is making the post on social networks? Is he a serious and reliable person, is he an idiot?
Is he someone who knows something about it or is he a bum with no experience at all?
These questions can stop you from making some careless purchases.
And always remember that limited time windows in most cases hide nasty surprises.
I don’t doubt that some of the axles being touted could be the new Tesla, but being cautious is always best.
You might feel like an idiot for missing an opportunity or will you be an idiot for losing all your money?
Keep calm and study.