What does a price rising after you sold do to your next decision?

Why this matters. The position is closed and it is still costing you something. Regret does its damage on the next decision, which is why it is easy to miss.

You exited by plan. The price went up. Your exit was correct and it feels like a mistake, and the feeling is about to be applied to a completely different position.

The counterfactual you can see

Selling produces a uniquely vivid comparison: the price keeps printing, so the path you did not take is displayed to you continuously, in real time, on the same screen. Almost no other decision in life comes with a live feed of the road not travelled.

That visibility is what gives it force. It is not that the outcome was worse — it is that the alternative is observable.

The trap, precisely

The next decision inherits it. Having sold too early once, you hold too long next time — not by reasoning, but by correction. And the correction is fitted to a single outcome, which is exactly the thing a process is supposed to protect you from.

Practitioner testimony: Annie Duke calls judging a decision by its outcome "resulting", and separates the decision log from the outcome log for this reason. Her material comes out of professional card play; the method transfers, the setting does not, and this academy does not treat markets as a game of chance.

The artefact

Two columns, kept apart on purpose: decision quality and outcome. At the time of the exit you record whether the exit condition was met — yes or no. Separately, later, you record what the price did.

The columns are allowed to disagree. That is the entire point. A correct decision with a bad outcome is a row you will see many times, and seeing it in a table is what stops it from silently rewriting your next entry.

Try it now

Take your last three exits. For each, write "condition met: yes/no" and separately "price after: up/down". Notice which column you had been remembering.