The essence of trading is a practice against human nature. The market is not short of short-term profiteers, but lacks survivors who can maintain discipline amid desire and fear — true experts build their moats by 'killing human weaknesses'.
First admonition: strangle impulsive trading with rules.
Chasing highs and cutting losses is an invisible killer of capital: every unplanned operation is paying the 'emotional tax' to the market, especially in a 'slow bull trap' (narrow gains but frequent fluctuations), frequent trading will only exhaust profits through fees. Practical iron rule: set a '24-hour cool-off period', all trades should be written in advance. Case study: Alex traded only once a day during the 2023 BNB volatility period, marking key positions with Fibonacci lines, operating less than 50 times a year, with a return of 280%, three times higher than high-frequency traders — less action, avoiding 90% of ineffective fluctuations.
Second admonition: always say 'no' to leverage.
The contract market is a 'water-drawing meat grinder': 90% of participants end up working for the platform and big players, a 5% reverse fluctuation under 10x leverage leads to liquidation, while 100x leverage is a 'capital crushing machine'. Negative case: in 2024, a player went long on ETH with 100x leverage and was instantly liquidated during a pullback, owing the platform $300,000. Positive benchmark: quantitative trader 'cold start' with zero leverage, profiting reliably in BTC fluctuations through grid strategies, no liquidations over 36 months, with an annualized return of 45% — rejecting gambler mindset, trading time for space.
The third realm: earn money within your understanding, know when to stop in time.
Market traps are designed around human weaknesses: getting rich off Dogecoin, private placements with 'internal quotas', leverage 'betting small to win big', all essentially harvest the 'greed tax'. A hallmark of mature traders is learning 'selective inaction'. Textbook operation: 0XSUN in the 2024 ARB ecosystem hype, opened a position at 0.8U, set '2x take profit + 0.95U stop loss', when the market called for 10U, decisively cleared at 1.6U — ultimately, the coin dropped to 0.5U, locking in a 100% profit. Master wisdom: Paul Tudor Jones calculates 'how much can I lose' before every trade, accurately shorting before the 1987 stock market crash based on 'maximum loss threshold' — risk control always comes before profit fantasies.
Ultimate truth: survival is more important than getting rich quickly.
Trading is not about who makes more money, but about who lasts longer:
Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates survived 12 crises through 'risk parity', standing strong for 50 years.
Trader 'Old A' only buys the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, operates twice a month, with a five-year return of 600%, and a maximum drawdown of 15%.
Their commonality: treating trading as a 'probability game', using discipline as a firewall — making fewer mistakes naturally leads to profits. Remember: the secret to surviving in the market has never been about catching every wave, but rather seeing the cost behind temptation and using rules to tame human nature.