Losing money is the order of the day for experienced investors

A few weeks ago my crypto friend (everyone has one) told me that he had "about £ 70,000 in the minus". He is what is going through in London as a middle class and can probably afford to lose £ 70,000 because he has done everything with crypto in recent years. After freed from his losses, he began to talk about buying the dip, which indicates that he did not completely lose faith.

In view of the latest losses, he is of course an elasticity. It's not just crypto. Mark Zuckerberg and Bernard Arnault have lost more than $ 40 billion this year, mainly due to falling shares - a loss that corresponds to GDP of Serbia or Azerbaijan. Forrest Li, Singapore's richest man's $ 22 billion, fell by 80 percent in May for similar reasons. This threw it from the list of the 500 rich in the world, as calculated by the Bloomberg data group.

How do people deal with such losses? Anyone who has had to do with money for a long time often deals with it better, says Brad Klontz, a clinical psychologist, which is specialized in assets. You will have diversified portfolios, which means that it is unlikely that your entire assets will be wiped out at once, and will be happy to sit out of autumn and acquire assets cheaply. Almost all of the greatest losers that people suffer from various asset lists fall into this category - paper losses, which are finally compensated for by paper gains.

But for those who made millions very quickly, it can be a different story. Especially if you had used debts to enlarge your profits - the process works the other way round when the asset prices fall, which makes the consequences much worse. They can become depressed, angry or even suicide. "It depends on how much of your ego and self -esteem is in your assets," says Klonz.

an aggravating factor, he adds, is that those who have become rich in this way have often done so by ignoring conventional wisdom: "You have learned the wrong lesson, but it is one that worked incredibly well for you."

Studies indicate that people often attribute success, which are mainly lucky, to their own talent, whereby men do this more than women. The problem is if you believe that your own loner genius brought you the millions, it is very difficult to twitch with your shoulders and say: "These are the breaks" if you lose 90 percent of it. What makes someone a successful businessman can make some believe that they are good in everything, especially in investments.

Tony Marini, a psychotherapist in Scotland. . . , says he sees a lot of people who started trading before they went into addiction

If that sounds like a gray area between investment and gambling, it is too. Tony Marini, a psychotherapist in Scotland, whose special areas are gambling and financial addicts, says that he sees many people who have started trade before they have moved into addiction. Often it is men aged 25 to 40 who areolate themselves from the outside world in online bubbles, where they reinforce each other in behavior and beliefs.

Marini saw a man who, after losing £ 1 million of his own money, then spent £ 1.5 million of his company's money to get it back. Another player investor converted family assets of £ 180 million into £ 20 million before finally stopping.

Especially in areas such as crypto and daytrading, he says, "you often see that people start reasonably, but exceed the border to addictive behavior". Marini, who himself lost £ 2 million before he went into recovery, says that he often sees cross addiction - where people are awake all night to see the graphic, drinking and taking cocaine (which brings with it how gambling and depths).

Another problem is that the losses and pain can spread. Those who have the feeling that they have found an abbreviation for immeasurable wealth will often recommend them to friends and family. So if everything goes wrong, you have to deal with the guilt next to your own failure to have lost the hard -earned money of your relatives and your own "lost".

So what should you do? If it is addictive - defined as no control over something you do, to an extent that it is harmful - you have to seek help and support. And if it is just a big and traumatic loss, you have to process it, to put up with what happened and find a way. In any case, you have to deal with real life and people who are important to them.

The solutions are known, if not easy. Gerald Ratner, a British businessman who has lost almost everything because of an informal joke, once told me that you shouldn't take antidepressants and spend your life in bed and watch TV during the day. After his wife had read the turmoil, Ratner finally started cycling, which helped him out of the jewelry in which he was.

Another lesson is not to shy away from any risk, says Klontz. "A few years ago, I met someone who had made the losses she had made in the dot.com bubble so traumatized that she stopped investing in shares," he says. "She sat on the sidelines for 15 years and missed the greatest bull run in history."

Follow Rhymer on Twitter @Rhymerrigby

This article is part of ft-rich a section with detailed reporting on philanthropy, entrepreneur, family offices as well as alternative and impact investments