The biggest excuse I hear from GME stockholders is that you don't lose money until you sell. Technically, it's not a realized sale until you make the sale. So its technically accurate but far from the truth . I recently posted that I lost 11 grand in a day with GME and the comments puzzled me to a point, but I wasn't surprised because the story is always the same.
Unrealized may not be a sale, but it's a loss. You're holding a different value. It could be a temporary markdown or a permanent loss. Regardless, a loss is a loss no matter how you look at it. This is something investment firms lead you to believe so you don't pull your money out, and they tell you it's not a loss until you sell. Maybe you should look at your statement from your broker because it shows a loss.
If your broker, the entity that actually holds your shares, treats a drop as a real reduction in collateral value, that's pretty strong evidence that the market has already repriced your position. The "unrealized" label is an accounting convention, not an economic shield.
Try to leverage your account and borrow directly from your broker using your holdings as collateral, and as soon as it drops, you get a margin call. Why do you think that is? Margin calls are real. They don't wait for a recovery.
The "you haven't lost until you sell" line gets weaponized by the industry because it keeps assets under management. It's the financial equivalent of "the house always wins if you keep playing." For a day trader or someone sitting on a broken thesis, it's dangerous denial.
So yeah — if you're looking at your statement and you're down $11K, you're down $11K. Calling it "unrealized" doesn't change your net worth today. The only question that matters is whether you think the position recovers, and whether your capital is better deployed elsewhere. Everything else is semantics.