You made the cardinal mistake of investing: you bought high, and sold low. Many rookie investors make this mistake because they are unable to control their emotions when the value of their investment takes a downturn. It can be nerve-wrecking to imagine all your money evaporating.
Fortunately, your mistake cost you only $800. So it was actually a good learning experience. From now on, buy low and sell high. For example, the best time to buy is when a (recoverable) disaster or sensationalized story cause a financially strong company's stock price to dip. That's the perfect opportunity to buy some of that stock.
What is high and what is low is of course speculative.
When investing in the stock market I of course use that basic logic by analyzing the KPIs of the securities. This was less of an investment and more of an experiment in modern technology, prompted by some skeptical comments from my friends. For that reason it was more like purchasing a lottery ticket.
My $1000 lottery ticket didn't perform well, but due to my real investments paying off well over the years, I can handle the loss without much thought. Win some. Lose some.
Sorry enraged_camel, but I think most people would consider this very bad investment advice. There's much, much more thinking that needs to go into speculative investment decisions than just the phrase "buy low sell high". In fact, that phrase is pretty useless advice on its own and often invoked as a joke among investors.
(Though there is truth in your specific point that people are at risk of making irrational decisions they regret when investments go sour.)
Fortunately, your mistake cost you only $800. So it was actually a good learning experience. From now on, buy low and sell high. For example, the best time to buy is when a (recoverable) disaster or sensationalized story cause a financially strong company's stock price to dip. That's the perfect opportunity to buy some of that stock.