Coping with Stock Market Losses

This post is from a venture capital investor, but it has good points for most investors. The piece starts with the author being told early in his career that if he didn’t have any losses in his portfolio he wasn’t taking enough risk. Since then, he’s incurred many losses, but he’s still doing well on a net basis. He explains why, and how to manage your losses.

So it looks like something like 14 winners and 8 losers. We will likely lose all or almost all of our money on roughly 40% of our investments in that fund.

My point on sharing all of this with you is to explain that losing money is part of being an investor. It happens. As Richie, the guy who sits behind me and my friend John at the Nets game, says “you can’t make ’em all.”

But there are some things you can do with your winners and losers to drive up your performance.