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"You don't lose money unless you sell" is one of those sayings people take for granted because it's repeated so much, just like "Don't time the market, dollar cost average". Nobody ever thinks about these sayings critically because it brings up uncomfortable truths about what we are really doing here when we buy stocks hoping for their value to go up.
Firstly, "Don't time the market, dollar cost average" ignores the fact that every time you dollar cost average is in fact timing the market - you are choosing to buy at a specific price and specific time, with zero relation to technicals and fundamentals and you are NOT choosing to NOT buy at that price and time. You'll be engaging in market timing every single withdrawal with your 4% rule in retirement, too.
There are two main issues with "You don't lose money unless you sell". The first being that the inverse is true. You don't MAKE money unless you sell. When you buy stocks, you no longer own money, you own stocks, no matter what your brokerage balance is approximating how much money those stocks are worth. Money is the ultimate goal of investing in stocks, not accumulation of the stocks themselves. When the stocks you own appreciate in value, you did not make money. You have the exact same amount of stocks you had before.
The other issue is that everyone knows the advice of "You don't lose money unless you sell", but it's not up to them whether they sell or not.
When you're triple long:
Long real estate through your home/mortgage, mortgage being leverage itself.
Long equities through a stock portfolio with little to no cash position
Long employment through your job
You are extremely vulnerable to economic disruptions when two of those long positions have the rug pulled out from under them (Equities and employment), which tends to be the case in economic disruptions and recessions. If this happens to you, you do not have an option to not lose money unless you sell. You will be selling to protect your long position in real estate (your mortgage), and wall street will then sell the stocks you just sold them for pennies on the dollar back to you when you once again engage in your "Don't time the market, dollar cost average" programming in the economic recovery.
When people say "if you stick to a dollar cost average in the stock market and just held on to your stocks in the 1990 crash, in the 2000 crash, in the 2008 crash, in the 2011 crash, in the 2015 crash, in the 2020 crash, you'd be a multimillionaire right now". Well, look around. Where are the multimillionaires? Economic crashes cause people to liquidate against their choice. Their stock portfolios don't get to participate in the recoveries, and in the recoveries themselves they repeat the exact same strategy of buying high until the next crisis which will force them to sell low.
This isn't financial advice it's just a warning to question your assumptions about what you think is a "sure bet" in investing.