The Trader's Mind : Backstage

When the hell?? What the hell >??

The psychological phenomenon you're describing is a perfect cocktail of three well-documented cognitive biases that hit almost every retail investor at some point:

1. Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) – When you're out of the stock, every green candle screams “you’re missing the move!” and it feels like the stock only moons when you’re on the sidelines.
2. Disposition Effect (or “my stock is cursed” bias) – Once you own a position, you become hyper-focused on every tiny dip and start feeling like the stock is glued to the floor. The moment you sell (to stop the pain), the weight is lifted and it immediately rips higher. Psychologically, you now anchor on the exit price and any rise after that feels like “proof” the universe is punishing you.
3. Selective Memory / Confirmation Bias – You remember the five times you sold and it spiked the next day, but conveniently forget the twenty times you sold and it kept tanking. Your brain edits the highlight reel to reinforce the story: “Stocks I own never go up, stocks I sell always explode.”

Real-world name traders use for this exact feelingMost traders just call it “My Stock Syndrome” or “Watcher’s Curse”, but the most common meme phrase on FinTwit/Reddit is:“The stock knows when I buy and when I sell.”It’s so universal that it has its own jokes:

• “I’m not a trader, I’m a market catalyst. The second I enter, price reverses.”
• “My buy button is actually the top indicator and my sell button is the bottom indicator.”

How to fight it (practically)

• Keep a trade journal and actually log the times you were wrong both ways — it kills the selective memory.
• Use rules-based position sizing and exit plans before you enter (so emotion doesn’t drive the sell decision).
• Remind yourself: if a stock rips right after you sell, you still made the right risk-adjusted call at the time — being “wrong” on the very next candle doesn’t make the original trade bad.

In short, it’s not the stock that knows — it’s your brain playing a cruel highlight-reel trick on you. You’re not cursed… you’re just human.