"The Grim Reaper of Contract Traders Has Arrived: The 'Conservative Leverage' You Thought Was Safe is Eating Away at Your Principal"
At 3 AM, the phone screen glows a faint blue in the darkness. Zhang Lei's index finger mechanically refreshes the account balance, as a long position with 5x leverage is being continuously devoured by a 15-minute bearish candle. For the third time this month, he has staked the last 20,000 yuan of living expenses from his credit card cash advance.
The gambler's curse of "This time I will definitely break even" is being repeated in the slaughterhouse of the crypto world 24 hours a day.
Many people believe that 5x leverage is safe enough, but they don’t realize that going all-in with 5x leverage is essentially no different from 100x leverage—when the price fluctuates more than 20%, your account can instantly be wiped out as if it were cut by a laser.
The true survival rule lies in two numbers: a single position should not exceed 20% of total capital, and total leverage should not exceed 4x. Behind this seemingly simple formula is the "survivor's formula" that Wall Street's quantitative teams have paid with millions of dollars in tuition.
The other day, a student asked me: "Why do I get liquidated every time I hold a position?" I countered, "Do you know how the liquidation line is calculated at the futures exchange?" After three seconds of silence, he quietly sent a 2000 USDT red envelope.
The harsh reality of the contract market is: 90% of liquidations have nothing to do with market judgment. Those gamblers who are still staring at the screen at 3 AM will never understand that controlling position size is 100 times more important than predicting price movements.
Remember, when your stop-loss line becomes a heart rate monitor, the game is already over. Next month, I plan to start a private circle to talk about how to survive extreme market conditions using the "Ghost Position Technique," following the old rule of only passing on knowledge to those who are fated to receive it.