I don't know about how many people keep holding, but we just experienced a 30%+ fall in tech stocks (and 25% fall in sp500) last year. I held all my stocks because, well, what else was I going to invest in? And if I don't have a different preferred allocation, then I'm just trying to time the market.
My experience (thankfully not paid for with real money, but fake trading) has shown me I am not good at market timing, particularly knowing when to get back in, so I don't bother trying.
It doesn't really take restraint so much as an acceptance that I will likely not do better than buy & hold. I don't enjoy seeing my balance go down, but I am not close to retirement, so I accept that I need to wait it out to catch market rallies because I am not paying super close attention to markets.
> I held all my stocks because, well, what else was I going to invest in?
I recently learned about a class of investment strategies called tactical asset allocation. One aspect of TAA is to switch to some other asset when your main one isn't performing well.
It's a form of market timing but it's systematic and backtestable. Reallocating once a month, a lot like a rebalancing that even B&Hers probably do.
This site [0] has some interesting articles on their blog. HAA has really piqued my interest [1].
I have your mind set now. But it took me multiple painful lessons over the years until the learning stuck :-) Luckily I was much poorer back then or I would really be bummed right now.
My experience (thankfully not paid for with real money, but fake trading) has shown me I am not good at market timing, particularly knowing when to get back in, so I don't bother trying.
It doesn't really take restraint so much as an acceptance that I will likely not do better than buy & hold. I don't enjoy seeing my balance go down, but I am not close to retirement, so I accept that I need to wait it out to catch market rallies because I am not paying super close attention to markets.