This is true to a degree, but fear will always be the ultimate...

This is true to a degree, but fear will always be the ultimate driver and produce the most potent effects on human behaviour - much more than opportunity - hence even neutral updates create drops on announcement. Opportunists have the luxury of deciding whether to board a ship from land - holders have to quickly decide if the ground they are on is sinking or staying afloat.

I invest and trade with the baseline assumption that the average investor is a nervous wreck looking to make easy money off money they can't really afford to lose; a victim of his/her own emotions and investors like them. Fear spreads like a disease amongst the sheep and then they get played by the market. Mum and dad investors lose out to firms because the former keep emotion in the game, while the latter remove it and treat money as business.

With this in mind I've been able to counter my own fears, emotions etc. and ignore drops/downtrends that as a younger investor only ever cost me money/profits from selling too quickly at a loss out of panic. It took a long time to learn, but I eventually did, that you just don't sell at a loss. Don't invest money you can't afford to lose and don't sell at a loss. Consider the money spent/gone already. Since I began practicing this, I've always recovered any paper losses eventually and gone on to profit. At the least, you'll care less about an actual loss.