In this crazy crypto world of ours, I'm pretty sure we all have a pretty strong sense of when we've gotten our hands on a true “winner:” Almost every day seems to bring good news, and it sends the token price just a little (or a lot) higher, with only an occasional minor setback.

That one is pretty easy.

Similarly, it's not that hard to detect when something went seriously wrong with one of our investments and we realize that some project we followed based on a bunch of promises (and hype?) has basically gone down the tubes and everybody has left the building. Things are down 80% and still heading down, with no signs of a bounceback and no announcements of any sort. Best thing we can do is salvage the few cents we can get out of it, and put that handful of change to work somewhere else.

That one is pretty easy.

Both of the preceding scenarios tend to be what we hear and read about, too. Spectacular successes and failures are newsworthy...

Where is this ship going...?

Investing Is Rarely That Obvious...

Most of the time, however, what happens to our investments is that we put our hard earned money into something that seems to have a lot of promise — and keeps having a lot of promise — and yet all that ever seems to happen is that the market value of the project drifts eternally sideways... or it trends down slightly, but that's offset by yields, dividends, fractional airdrops or something else of relative benefit.

What do you do then?

Worse still, what do you do when you're invested in a project that keeps promising new developments, but the end result seems to be that each new feature stimulates an occasional short upspike, followed by a long gentle drift going downwards till we're right back where we started?

Raining on your parade...?

Along time ago, I came across the phrase ”too poor to hold, too good to sell.”

I think that's a dilemma we all face at one time or another, although such situations are typically contingent on individual investment expectations, as well.

I suppose there are different schools of thoughts as to what to do next. One of my personal challenges tends to be that ”I'm loyal to a fault,” and I get stuck in a pattern of actually believing that the promises of greatness ahead will eventually overcome that long slow drift downwards. I convince myself that I am a long term investor, and that also entails weathering extensive periods of sideways movement.

We can all find evidence to support our paradigms, but most gains in an asset's value tends to happen in sudden spurts followed by a lot of sideways movement... that in the end add up to pretty handsome gains. In a sense, also illustrating why trying to "time the market" turns into a "fool's errand" for so many investors.

But is that just a rationalization? Being "noble" isn't the same thing as being effective...

A different school of thought dictates that if you have an asset that's underperforming — aka going sideways — you should push your sense of loyalty aside and just sell it so you can put the money to work in something with better potential.

But what is it that has that better potential? And just how often can we expect to catch one of those ”true winners” I talked about in the first sentence, above?

This being a new year, I have been looking at some of my holdings, and particularly casting a glance in the direction of some of my DeFi and other yield bearing holdings. Even if you have an alleged 40% APR, it doesn't mean much if the base token is steadily declining at a rate where it has lost 40% of its value. You might have twice as many tokens as the year before, but the total asset value is exactly the same (or even less), compared to a year ago.

Sometimes we just have to look forward to what's around the NEXT corner...

It's easy to end up with the investing version of *"white line fever", in which we just sit mesmerized and watch the token count of our holdings rise, oblivious to the fact that it has been a year or more, and we actually have less value than when we started. Maybe that "fever" is even accentuated by various forms of "diamond hands" hype... but do we actually have the capacity to stay objective to our overall investing goal of overall capital appreciation?

Things within the Greater Hive Ecosystem are perhaps a little different because we often end up having project-specific loyalties that transcend the strict sense of "Rates of Return," and that can complicate the decision making a bit.

And so, I shall go back to evaluating my holdings... and try to be more objective about what I am really trying to accomplish!

Thanks for stopping by!

=^..^=

*CuratorCat 17-JAN-2022

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