First post — my lesson on 'averaging down' pre-GFC

New here, figured I'd share a quick lesson learned. Back in '07, I was in a few small-cap names, thought I was smart. The market started getting choppy, but instead of cutting losses when my thesis was clearly broken, I kept averaging down, convinced they'd rebound. My reasoning was purely based on the 'discount' I was getting. Ended up watching a significant chunk of capital just evaporate as the GFC hit. Should have respected the trend, the volume, and my initial stop. Now, I have a hard rule: if the initial reason for the trade is gone, so am I, regardless of the 'value'. Sunk cost fallacy is a powerful, expensive beast.