Your purchase price is not a fact.
The stock has no memory of what you paid. Only you do.
You're waiting for the stock to come back to what you paid.
Rajan had bought shares in a company he believed in. They'd fallen sharply. He knew the story had changed — the promoter had trimmed his stake, margins were sliding, the original reasons had quietly unravelled. But he couldn't bring himself to sell. He was waiting for the price to come back. 'Just let me get back to even,' he told himself, 'then I'll decide.' The stock didn't know it owed him anything. Only Rajan did.
Your purchase price feels like a fact about the stock. It isn't. It's a fact about your past decision — a memory that belongs to you, not to the business.
Kahneman and Tversky found that losses feel about 2.5 times more painful than equivalent gains feel good. That's why you check the price every morning scanning for recovery — while the same money sits idle, missing other opportunities.
The market has no memory of what you paid. Every morning it offers a fresh price based on expectations about the future. There is no old debt to settle.
The test that cuts through anchoring is this: would you buy this stock fresh today, at today's price? If no — if you'd find a better home for that money — then holding is just postponing a decision you've already made. And a stock down 50% must rise 100% just to reach where you started. The mathematics of recovery punish waiting.
The neighbour who forgets your history
Mr Market is your mood-swinging neighbour. Each morning he knocks on your door with a new price for your stake in a business you both own. He doesn't remember what you paid last year. He doesn't care. He's only thinking about today — his mood, the headlines, the season. Your job isn't to match his memory. It's to ask: what is this business actually worth today? That's the only number worth anchoring to.
Why this matters
You've felt this. A stock falls and you don't sell — you tell yourself it's patience. Ask honestly: is it patience, or is it waiting for a price to absolve a past decision? Every day you hold, you're choosing to reinvest at today's price. The purchase price is settled history. The only question still open is what to do right now, with what you know right now.
Enter your prices. See which number actually matters.
Enter the price you paid, the price today, and your estimate of what the business is truly worth. The tool shows the only comparison that matters — not how far you are from your entry, but where today's price sits relative to real value.
The only comparison that matters
You paid ₹1,000. Today's price is ₹700. Your IV estimate is ₹900. The only question that matters: is ₹700 a good price relative to ₹900? What you paid is a fact about your past — not a fact about the stock.
Hold for the thesis, not the price you paid.
Where people go wrong
- Holding a deteriorating company to get back to evenThe fundamentals have changed; the price target hasn't. You're waiting for the market to disagree with its own correct assessment.
- Averaging down without re-reading the original thesisBuying more of a falling stock feels disciplined. Without reassessing the thesis, it's anchoring amplified by fresh capital.
- Selling a quality compounder because the gain feels 'enough'Anchoring works in reverse too. Exiting at 30% because it feels like enough means the purchase price is acting as a ceiling, not the business's value.
- Treating a paper loss as less real than a booked lossBoth cost the same. The only difference is which column your broker puts it in.
The market doesn't know what you paid. That number lives only in your head, not in the stock.
Ask: would I buy this stock fresh today? If the answer is no, you already have your decision.
Waiting to break even has a real cost. ₹1,00,000 not compounding quietly falls behind a world that is growing.
Selling at a loss feels like admitting a mistake. So we don't — we wait for the price to absolve us instead. The market is not interested in absolution.