Have you experienced a near 50% decline in a stock position?

It hurts a lot. Massive understatement. I have 4 in my portoflio currently that have dropped 50. 1 of them rallied back and I got rid of it. I have had 50 drops + many before. I learned a lot of lessons from them. Each single one, I thank the stars for each on of them. Tough to explain to someone else who will never feel the same emotion to your own money. I am managing 600k of my own money and I am very profitable despite sounding gloomy. Money mgmt. You learn how to size each bet when you get good.

You know those diagrams with the sine wave that show all the feelings of investors, enthusiam, euphoria, sadness, depression, etc. etc?? To the tee. That's exactly how it feels from an emotional perspective. Except with me by the time it gets that low, I just lose all my senses and the feeling of fear, frustration, failure, all disappear and you say "Fuck it! at this point I aint selling shit, take it to 0 you F-ing market" and that's usually the point it starts to turn around.

Every single massive loss I have had I learned A MASSIVE amount from. MASSIVE amount. I learned the flaws in my models. Flaws in my assumptions. Flaws with my investment thesis. Flaws with money managment. Flaws with risk modeling. With all the pain it put me through, each failed investment, 50 and bellow, I learned a MASSIVE amount from and I wouldn't have changed a thing if I can redo them again looking back. They made me wiser, humbler, more patient, and I spend 10x more energy to learn my lesson and hone my craft.

Just like dough is a raw material needed by the pizza maker to make pizza. Massive painful losses are the raw ingredient to making a hall of fame investor. For revenue must have a cost. Every loss was my tuition payment in the University of Real Life.

I can tell by the fact that you have never experienced one and the fact that your asking about HOW they feel that you haven't reached that level. You are still an amateur. Whether you want to acknowledge that or not. Doesn't matter how much you think you know about the markets. Or how many years you have been investing. Or how many years you have worked in the industry. You could have a Godzilla IQ with an amazing strategy but there is a massive disconnect between theory, modeling, testing and actual practice. Because the world of investing is completely different than what a model suggests your returns are or what a book suggests is a good investment idea. You obviously have no scars. The quote by Warren Buffet you cited is a quote you CANNOT read and understand. You have to FEEL it to understand it. SEE it to fully grasp it. You can read it 100x times but it will fall on blind eyes and deaf ears because these types of losses are life changing. Buffet was speaking from experience. Experience of having many failures before he eventually got it right. Lessons that cannot be learned from a book, a class, a model.

Buffet's words were not meant for you. You are simply a passive reader my friend. Because after you have had many scars on your back and have learned a great deal about your trading and doing so with consistency. I promise you then.......and only then will you listen to the words of the oracle gain a deeper perspective. For each sentence/word you will hear from him will be as if you have never heard them before. The gravity of everything he says will finally sink and you will eventually get a glimpse in how his elegant mind works.