Do not let the five poisons (greed, anger, ignorance, doubt, and sloth) destroy you.
1. When the floating loss figure pops up on the screen, he knows better than anyone: this is not a technical battle, but a psychological strangulation.
At four in the morning, the blue light from the computer screen turned the bedroom into an ice cave. He stared at the floating loss figure in his account — 16 million, equivalent to the total net profit of the past three years. But strangely, he did not shake, did not feel suffocated, and even poured himself a glass of whiskey.
Because he knows that holding on has never been a contest with the market, but a life-and-death struggle with human nature.
Most people experience a five-step process of 'shock - gambler's psychology - numbness - self-blame - despair and adding positions' when holding on, but he knows this script too well. When BTC crashed to $3000 in 2018, he survived for 72 hours with the Martingale strategy; during the 312 black swan in 2020, he persuaded himself to hold his position using weekly support on the brink of liquidation — this was just another psychological marathon, but with higher stakes.
2. His philosophy of holding on: using 'anti-human systems' to tame the emotional beast.
While others hold on by gritting their teeth, he relies on a set of pre-designed 'strategy cages':
1. Martingale strategy: putting shackles on losses.
The initial position is always 10% of the total capital, the first add-on is 1.5 times, the second is 2.25 times, strictly increasing the position according to a geometric sequence, and never losing rhythm when emotions run high.
Before opening each order, he would write the reloading points and maximum positions in a memo (for example, this time the maximum is the 4th reload, with the total position reaching 60%) — locking decisions in a mathematical formula in advance, leaving no room for emotions to interfere.
2. Using 'God's perspective' to cut oneself off.
On the 15th day of holding on, when the floating loss expanded to 12 million, he asked himself in the mirror:
‘If this were someone else's account, would you advise them to stop loss?’
The answer is yes. But the obsession with 'this is my money' is the Achilles' heel for most people holding on. So he opened the trading software, changed the account nickname to 'stranger's account', and silently repeated it three times before each operation — by detaching himself, he could see things more clearly.
3. Using physical isolation to cut off emotional transmission.
Turn off all trading app notifications, lock the phone in another room, and only check the weekly and monthly charts once a day from 19:00 to 19:15.
During the holding period, he participated in his daughter's piano performances, accompanied his wife to the mall, and even organized a cigar gathering — using the certainty of real life to hedge against the uncertainty of account numbers.
3. Liquidation is not the end, but a rite of passage in cognition.
This liquidation, on the surface, seems like a deformation of operations:
Overconfidence led to setting the reloading interval too narrow (should have reloaded after a 10% drop, but actually acted at 5%);
Being eroded by the 'lying flat mentality', thinking 'since the position is heavy, I’ll just lay down and wait for a rebound', while ignoring the sudden changes in macro policy.
The most deadly thing is to alienate philosophical thinking into 'superstitious mysticism' — believing that 'the law of attraction' can reverse the market amounts to using the method of spiritual victory to escape reality.
But on a deeper level, he finally admitted: the nemesis of the Martingale strategy is not the market, but 'expectation overload'. The past ten successful single-bear trades made him mistakenly believe that 'as long as you can hold on, the market will yield', forgetting that the capital market specializes in treating all forms of defiance.
On the 37th day of holding on, he stopped loss at a key support level on the weekly chart. In that moment, there was no pain; instead, there was a sense of relief — admitting that he miscalculated required more courage than stubbornly holding until liquidation.
4. Between Buddhism, philosophy, and liquidation, he found a strange balance. During the holding period, he reread the (Diamond Sutra) 'One should generate the mind without dwelling on anything', and suddenly had an epiphany:
Pursuing 'not losing' while holding positions is like being obsessed with 'self-image', which instead traps you in losses.
While studying quantum mechanics, one might think that perhaps the floating losses in the account are merely illusions of parallel universes, while the anxiety of the moment is the real inner struggle.
Even using the 'law of attraction' in the opposite way: telling oneself every day 'I can accept the worst outcome' actually relaxes the mindset — these seemingly meaningless thoughts are, in fact, safety valves for tense nerves.
Of course, the side effects are also obvious: one day while staring blankly at the candlestick chart, he suddenly felt that 'numbers are merely a collective illusion of humanity', almost missing a key stop-loss point — philosophy is both an antidote and a poison, depending on how you consume it.
5. A piece of advice for all holders: liquidation is not scary; what is scary is not having developed 'anti-fragile' bones. Looking back now, that 16 million was not lost money, but rather a 'cognitive upgrade fee' paid by the market.
Holding on is not persistence, but a window period to patch up the strategy's vulnerabilities.
Psychological fluctuations are not scary; what is scary is the self-deception of saying 'I am very calm'.
The true trading mindset is to accept losses as one accepts the change of seasons — spring will not always be absent, but do not expect winter to jump directly to summer.
Finally, let me say a heart-wrenching truth:
If you tremble, lose sleep, or frantically refresh messages while holding on, it indicates that the strategy has not been stress-tested at all.
If you feel 'nothing' like he does, you are either numb or truly prepared — but in any case, do not let your account become the hostage of your emotions.
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