If you buy something and it gains value but a complete transaction cycle hasn't been achieved, it doesn't constitute a true profit; similarly, if you buy something and it loses value but you don't sell it, a complete transaction cycle hasn't been reached, so it doesn't constitute a true loss.
In the stock market, there are two terms, one is 'paper profit' and the other is 'paper loss,' which investors often mention, but these two terms are completely different. Let me just say this: Living things will eventually die sooner or later, but dead things will never come back to life—isn't that so?
Because the endpoint of everything is death. Sometimes, it's just a matter of being sick, and the sickness may pass, but there will always be a time when it doesn't, and that is the inevitable endpoint. Maintaining an orderly state requires additional energy, but the environment changes, adaptability changes, and external forces may attack. When the energy can no longer sustain the orderly state and it completely turns into disorder, it's impossible to (reorganize into) the exact same orderly state again. It may be reorganized in another way into a better form, but that has nothing to do with what you bought or your money. The money you invested was for the original item, and once it's gone, it's gone.

Trading is a game where losing money is always easier than making it. Many people take profits as soon as they see a small gain but hold onto their losses indefinitely, refusing to sell until they recoup their losses. This is a very bad habit, akin to what Warren Buffett described as 'picking up pennies in front of a steamroller'—making only small profits each time, which seems like a high win rate and continuous wins, but one single loss can wipe out all the profits and result in a net loss. Essentially, this is a bad strategy that only cares about short-term emotional evaluations while ignoring systemic risks.

So, what is a better strategy? Only buy assets that, in the long run, allow for 'floating losses' to truly remain 'floating.' Only in this way can floating losses be on an equal footing with floating profits—meaning that over the long term, they go through many cycles, but each cycle's peak is higher than the previous one's, as history has repeatedly proven.

It's said that housing prices have returned to the levels of 2016, but is that enough? No, it's far from enough. Those who bought before 2016 are still making money and holding onto their properties. Are they highly knowledgeable? Obviously not. Many of them stumbled into it by accident. And as long as these accidental investors didn't enter the market as early as the beginning of the 2000s with an unbreakable margin of safety, as long as they are still earning money, housing prices will not stop falling. They need to be 'washed out' until they give up their gains. This is the rule