Brothers, today we won't talk about fancy indicators, but rather one life-saving skill I summarized from my experience of losing 8 million and three liquidations—MACD divergence.
This is not a magical tool, but a mirror that reveals the true face of the manipulators. Every divergence is a turning point in market sentiment. During the bull market in 2021, when BTC was at 69,000, I was fully leveraged long, my account was up by 4 million, and people in the group were shouting 'break 100k'. I was dreaming while staring at the candlestick chart. But at the most frantic moment, I was awakened by a shrinking red bar. At 3 a.m. that day, I was fixated on the shrinking MACD red bar, and the scene of ETH crashing at 4800 three years ago flashed in my mind—back then, it was also the bar that collapsed first, and the price followed with a sharp drop the next day.
The next day, BTC crashed, with a drop of over 58%. I managed to escape, while many did not have time to run, and their accounts went to zero. Divergence is never metaphysics, but a signal left for knowledgeable traders when manipulators retreat.
This phenomenon is not a coincidence. In 2023, when LUNA collapsed, the entire market was criticizing pyramid scheme coins, but I saw on the weekly chart that while the price hit new lows, the green energy bars were rapidly contracting. I knew this was a signal for accumulation at the bottom. Whale addresses on the chain had been accumulating tens of millions of UST for several weeks. I built my position in batches and endured. The following year, the RWA concept exploded, and that trade recovered my previous loss of 3 million.
Understanding divergence allows you to avoid big pitfalls in advance and also pick up gold in despair. Many people only look at prices hitting new highs, ignoring changes in volume; yet, manipulators take advantage of this visual error, creating illusions to harvest emotions. When DOGE surged to 0.35, the red bars had already shrunk to a third of the previous high, and I immediately cleared my position, leading to a subsequent 70% drop.
What’s even more dangerous is blindly believing in 'golden crosses'. Many people rush in when they see a golden cross, but the manipulators love to use golden crosses to test the waters. During the first golden cross of PEPE in 2024, I was monitoring OKX's hot wallet dynamics and noticed that tens of millions of USDT were flowing in and out, which made me realize something was off. Sure enough, three days later, the price dropped by 20%. The real opportunity to enter is when confirmed on larger timeframes, with a surge in on-chain active funds and simultaneous volume explosion—that's when the signals resonate, and the win rate is extremely high.
If you have truly experienced the despair of consecutive massive losses, you will understand that the market is not won through impulse. I once managed to control my losses steadily using the 'volume strangulation + multi-timeframe stop loss method' during the fake breakout of ETH, while my group friends, due to stubbornly holding on, returned to square one overnight. To survive, one must learn to foresee the main force's probing, inducing buying, and true dumping rhythms in advance.
Many people think trading cryptocurrencies relies on luck and technology, but the core is actually counterintuitive. That year, after losing everything, I printed out all the candlestick charts and pasted them on the wall, staring at examples of top and bottom divergences until my eyes turned red. Now, with my eyes closed, I can sense changes in the rhythm of the energy bars. This intuition is not a gift; it is forged from wounds.
Controlling position size is my biggest confidence to reach today. No matter what signals I see, my initial position will never exceed 5% of the total position, and I will add to my position rhythmically, instead of gambling with an all-in approach. Last year, when the AI sector was hot, I caught a nice rhythm on FET, entering and exiting thoughtfully, and never exceeding a 10% position, yet I steadily made a profit of 12 million.
The highest discipline in trading is knowing when to stop at the wrong time. After three consecutive stop losses, I would close my position for 24 hours to regain calm judgment. Once, after losing five trades in a row, I forced myself to take a three-day break, and when I reopened, I realized my previous direction was completely wrong. The market will not treat those who respect it poorly.
MACD is not a magic lamp that predicts the future, but it is a thermometer of the manipulators' emotions. The expansion and contraction of the energy bars is like the breathing of funds. When you can read from this breathing rhythm whether it is accumulating or distributing, whether it is acting or dumping, making money will no longer depend on luck.
The 600 million in my account is not a legend from a single windfall, but an accumulation of 'not losing' bit by bit. The ones who truly survive in the crypto world are not the smartest, but those who understand how to control emotions, avoid risks, and steadily stay alive.
If this article can help you avoid one liquidation or one drawdown, then it is worth it. If you have friends who are also losing and messing around, remember to share this article with them.
