Honestly, every time I see someone posting a screenshot of 'fully invested and flipping the market,' I want to hand them a glass of ice water. In this industry, today’s celebration screenshots are likely tomorrow’s liquidation letters.
Don't laugh, I was even crazier back then.
Holding the 8,000 capital I just managed to gather, my mind was filled with fantasies of 'using this wave to get a new computer.' I directly maxed out the leverage without even setting up any risk protection. Now that I think about it, that wasn’t trading; it was sending lucky money to the market.
The market didn't even give me time to dream. A normal fluctuation of fifteen minutes caused my account to shrink by half. I slumped in my chair, staring at the numbers on the screen jumping like an ECG, my heart pounding so hard it hurt my ribs, and when the cigarette in my hand burned to my thumb, I jumped up, the heat making me shake my hand.
That day I felt like I was slapped hard by the market: so-called liquidation is never due to bad luck but is a necessary path for those who seek quick gains, painful but curative.
'The dream of turning over in one night' shattered, I finally considered myself truly in the door—trading requires first learning to respect it, then learning to place orders. Emotions are the stumbling stones on the trading path; the more you go along with them, the more they lead you into the ditch.
I have seen too many 'flash in the pan' experts: the guy at the adjacent workstation, after making a little money, starts calling himself a 'beacon in the market', bragging in the group every day, only to fail three times in a week and eventually delete his account and run away; the uncle in the community, losing money while staring at the screen all night, his eyes red like a rabbit, buying more chaotically as he panicked, ultimately left with nothing.
They all fell into the same trap: thinking that trading is about 'daring to charge', but the real experts have the core skill of 'knowing how to wait'. This is something I realized after losing real money—spend seventy percent of the time as an 'observer', watching without getting itchy hands; spend thirty percent of the time as a 'hunter', capturing signals and making accurate moves, just seizing one wave of the market is enough.
Last year's popular cryptocurrency market, I made a lot of money relying on this idea. While others were obsessively staring at the K-line fluctuations to the point of going bald, I was watching the Bollinger Bands indicator: when the bands were narrowing, it was like a bow fully drawn, never making a move; once the bands opened up with volume, that was when the opportunity came.
I entered the market in batches at low positions, firmly nailing the risk line at key levels, and then just did what needed to be done, no longer staring at the screen until my eyes ached like before. Three weeks later, I opened my account to find the numbers multiplied by thirty—this isn't luck, it's the confidence gained from strict discipline.
Now on the first page of my trading notebook, I have three 'life-saving rules': the risk of a single trade must not exceed 2% of the principal, no more than two trades a day, and immediately take measures to protect profits once floating profits reach 50%. Some say I'm too conservative, but in this fluctuating market, 'surviving' is always more important than 'making quick money'.
The market has never lacked reckless adventurers, but what it lacks is 'old hands' who can persist for the long haul. If you're still following the K-line emotions and making trades solely based on 'gut feelings', take my advice and pause to calm down.
