Mohit Mehra

Much of human psychology, and especially trading psychology, is shaped by comparison. We do not just measure how we are doing in absolute terms, we measure ourselves against others. In the markets this is constant: a stock we didn’t buy rallies, a friend makes a quick profit, and suddenly it feels like we lost something even when nothing actually left our account. Outside markets it works the same way. A colleague gets a promotion, a neighbour buys a new car, or someone’s holiday photos appear on our screen. We might be doing fine, but someone else’s gain makes us feel left behind.

This tendency is hardly new. My grandfather, like his father before him and his son after, was a stockbroker. He often reached for a proverb to explain this envy, which I am sharing below with the English translation.

The point is simple: our sadness doesn’t come from losing something ourselves. It comes from watching someone else gain. In trading this is familiar. You sell a stock for a small profit and watch it double later. None of this is an actual loss, but it feels like one. That feeling pushes traders into chasing moves, taking on risk, and walking away from their plans.

Daniel Kahneman, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, wrote about how we feel the pain of losses more strongly than the pleasure of gains. But what is interesting is that losses don’t have to be real. They can be counterfactual, the what could have been. A trade you didn’t take, an opportunity you missed, even someone else’s success can be coded in your brain as if you lost something yourself. The mind blurs the line between actual and imagined losses.

This is why traders often struggle not with losing money, but with watching others make money. It feels like theft when it isn’t. A stock that runs up without you, or a friend’s sudden windfall, can sting more than your own mistake. Kahneman’s research explains why: our brains are wired to anchor on comparisons, and comparisons define our happiness more than absolute outcomes.

Outside markets, it’s the same. Social media is a constant stream of counterfactual losses. Someone else’s holiday is a holiday you’re not taking. Someone else’s career milestone is one you haven’t reached. Even if your own situation is good, it suddenly feels smaller in comparison. The neighbour’s new car doesn’t take your old one away, but it can still shrink your sense of worth.

Warren Buffett once said that the stock market transfers money from the impatient to the patient. A quieter truth is that the market also triggers envy. And envy, left unchecked, makes people impatient. That’s when traders abandon discipline, pile into the hot stock, and turn paper envy into real losses.

I have felt this very directly. Whenever I took large positions in single stocks, I almost always ended up regretting it. If the stock went up, I cashed out too early and then watched it climb further, regretting the exit. If the stock went down, I stuck with it, refusing to sell, and regretted that too. Leveraged single-stock and options positions are a monster level version of this. The regret on the downside and “hodling” the position might be a different emotion, perhaps denial or hope but that deserves its own discussion. But the tilt after missing out on big winners, even when you made some money, is clearly envy at work. You didn’t lose. You gained. But someone else gained more, and that tilt can knock you off balance.

The old Magadhi line is a reminder to pause and notice this. Nothing slipped from your hand. Nothing was stolen. Someone else simply received. Recognising this can be a guardrail in markets and in life. It can mean the difference between letting envy drive your choices and staying grounded in your own path.

Envy does not come from loss, but from comparison.