What makes the bottom the easiest place to sell?

Why this matters. Selling at the worst moment does not feel like panic from the inside. It feels like clarity arriving at last, and that is precisely the problem.

The observation is old enough to be a cliché and it is not folklore — capitulation is a real thing that happens to people who are not panicking.

What the moment feels like

Not fear. Relief. After a long period of holding under pressure, the decision to stop resolves something that has been open for months, and resolution is pleasant regardless of what is being resolved.

It also arrives with a story that feels like insight: I finally see it clearly. Course 1 covered why that story is available exactly then — an explanation relieves ambiguity whether or not it relieves the problem.

Why the timing clusters

Because the conditions that produce the feeling — maximum duration, maximum distance from the peak, maximum accumulated explanation — are the same conditions that tend to coincide with extremes in price. The alignment is not mystical. Both are driven by how long the pressure has been applied.

What does not help

Resolving to hold through it. A resolution made calmly is being tested by a state specifically characterised by the feeling of having reached clarity — and clarity overrides prior resolutions, because that is what clarity is for.

What does

Replicated: pre-committed if-then instructions produce better follow-through than intentions formed in the moment (Gollwitzer and Sheeran). So the instruction has to be written when nothing is resolving, and it has to be specific enough to fire without interpretation.

The artefact

A written exit condition that is not a feeling: the observable state of the world in which this position should be closed, decided in advance.

Then the moment of clarity has something to be checked against. If the condition is met, the exit was planned. If it is not met and you are about to act anyway, you have learned something more useful than either outcome — and it is written down, which is what makes it available later.

Try it now

Write the observable condition for one position. Then read it and ask whether you could tell, from the outside, whether it had been met.