Suits&Stocks

A lot of people think the stock market is only about graphs and getting lucky. And yeah, the getting lucky part might be true sometimes, but really, it’s more about emotions than anything else. One of the biggest ones? FOMO. That stands for “fear of missing out.” And it’s one of the main reasons people lose money in the stock market.

FOMO doesn’t even feel like fear at first. It feels more like pressure. Imagine you’re on TikTok or Instagram, and you keep seeing people talking about a stock that’s blowing up. They’re posting screenshots of how much money they made and how “you have to get in now.” You see the price going up super fast. And you start thinking, “If I don’t buy now, I’ll miss my chance.” So even though you didn’t plan to buy it, and maybe don’t even know much about it, you still jump in. Not based on research or analytics, but out of fear of missing out.But most of the time, when you buy during that hype, it’s already too late. You end up buying high, and then it crashes. Now you’re stuck with a stock worth way less than what you paid. That’s what FOMO does. It makes you forget logic and act out of panic. Which usually just leads to losing money.

This same thing happened with GameStop back in 2021. It was everywhere—Reddit, the news, all over social media. Some people made a ton of money, but most of the people who bought in late ended up losing a lot. They weren’t making smart or thought-out decisions. They were just reacting to all the hype and didn’t want to feel left behind.I’ve done this myself, honestly. I bought some random stock once just because a TikTok guy said it was gonna “explode.” I didn’t even know what the company actually did or anything about it. I just didn’t want to be the only one missing out. And yeah, it dropped right after I bought in. I lost a bunch of money fast. But that loss actually taught me something important—the best traders aren’t always the smartest. They’re usually just the ones who are best at controlling their emotions.

Sometimes the smartest move is to do nothing at all. That’s something I’ve learned from experience. You don’t have to go after every stock that’s suddenly trending. You don’t have to follow the crowd just because they’re loud. If you keep trading just because you’re scared of being the only one not in, you’ll probably keep making bad calls. You’re just reacting to the noise instead of actually thinking for yourself.

FOMO is real, but it’s not a good reason to make a trade. It’s more like a test. Can you stay calm when everyone else is freaking out? Can you pause and actually think when your emotions are trying to rush you? If you can do that, you’ll go further than most new traders. Even if you don’t have a ton of experience yet. At the end of the day, trading isn’t only about picking stocks. It’s about learning to focus, making smart decisions, and keeping your emotions in check. That’s what Suits & Stocks is really about. Not just chasing money, but thinking with purpose and learning from what’s actually going on in the world around us.

Taaha Khan, host of Suits and Stocks