Opening his moments, the latest post was a screenshot from 2 AM: the red waterfall of ETH dropping below the 4680 stop-loss level, captioned 'The 23rd time hesitating before the stop-loss level, still couldn't avoid it.' Below, all the likes are familiar IDs — all are people who have rolled in trading for a few years.
The difficulty lies in: giving genes a knife — forcibly twisting instincts that have been engraved in bones for hundreds of thousands of years.
In his fifth year of trading, Old Zhou once chased an ETH long position at 4800.
At 2 AM that day, the price dropped to 4705, just 5 points away from the stop-loss level. He stared at the screen and finished an entire pack of cigarettes, with the ashtray piled high with butts. His phone lit up with a message from his wife: 'The child has a fever, can you come back?' He didn't reply, his finger hovered over the 'close position' button — his mind felt like two beasts fighting: one shouted 'wait a bit, maybe it will rebound' (the instinct of an intelligent person on the prairie, 'just hold on a bit longer and I can catch the prey'), the other roared 'quickly close! It broke the level' (this was the discipline he had trained for three years).
In the end, he didn't close his position. At 4 AM, when the liquidation message popped up, he was squatting down putting a fever patch on his child. His wife turned over and asked, 'Did you make money?' He stared at the ceiling and said, 'Hmm, a small profit,' his voice trembling like paper blown by the wind.
This is the most ruthless part of trading: what you are fighting against is never the K lines, but the survival codes etched into your genes.
Homo sapiens relied on 'greed' to hoard food to survive the Ice Age, but when it comes to trading, it becomes 'holding for a 10% profit, waiting for 20%', and in the end, profits turn into losses — Old Zhou's error notebook on page 73 says: 'In May 2021, SOL rose from 180 to 200, wanted to wait for 210 to sell, but ended up falling back to 170, wasted three nights.'
Relying on 'luck' to survive at the jaws of a beast, when it comes to the stop-loss level, it becomes 'just hold on for 5 more points and it will rebound' — Little Li in the group, on the day of the FTX collapse, held onto the 'the platform won't go down' hope, heavily long SOL from 210 to 80, when the liquidation happened, he was signing a contract with a client, his pen fell on the ground and he didn't even pick it up.
Relying on 'following the crowd' to integrate into the tribe for survival, when it comes to the contract market, it becomes 'everyone in the group is shouting long and I jump in' — in November 2023, when SOL surged to 210, more than 300 people followed the 'big V' to chase the highs, in the end, stop-loss orders exploded like snowflakes, and no one in the group talked for three days.
To change these? You have to live yourself into 'anti-human.'
Later, Old Zhou pasted a mirror next to his screen, forcing himself to stare at the mirror before each order and say: 'Every bit of greed you have now will turn into tears when you are liquidated in the future.' When his error notebook reached page 198, he finally learned to place orders robotically at the stop-loss level — that day after closing the ETH long position, he hid in the stairwell to have a cigarette, his hands still shaking, yet smiling at the window in the corridor: 'Like pulling out a thorn that has been stuck in the flesh for five years.'
The difficulty lies in: the market is a thousand-faced ghost — just as you recognize its face, it changes its skin.
On the day the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in 2022, Little Lin's moving average strategy completely failed.
He made trades based on the '5-day crossing the 10-day line' strategy for more than half a year, but that day when BTC dropped below all moving averages, he still entered long positions based on 'support levels.' At the close, his account lost 400,000, he cursed at the screen saying 'the market is unreasonable,' an old trader threw back: 'Moving averages are the boat, capital flow is the water; if the water changes course, can the boat not capsize?'
The market has never been a well-behaved student following the textbook.
You think 'mainstream coins are resilient', but during the FTX collapse, BTC dropped 20% in a day, harsher than altcoins.
You think 'interest rate cuts will lead to a rise', but in 2023 when Powell hinted at rate cuts, ETH first dropped 15% before rebounding, how many were buried while 'buying the dip';
You focus on the on-chain buy orders for SOL to calculate support, but unexpectedly, a tweet from Musk about 'Dogecoin' causes all funds to suddenly rush to trade MEME coins, your long position holds from 205 to 198.
To see through this ever-changing essence, one must endure the hardship of 'picking up patterns from the ruins.'
When Old Zheng studied non-farm payroll data, he made a table of every non-farm night from 2018 to 2024: when the data exceeded expectations, BTC averaged a drop of 3.2%, but in that instance in 2021, it rose by 5% — later he found out that day Grayscale had just increased its holdings by 12,000 BTC, 'macro data must be viewed with capital flow.'
Xiao Min reviewed the bull and bear transitions from 2017 to 2024 and found that in the early stages of every bull market, 'altcoins double first, mainstream coins slowly follow', while in the later stages of bear markets, 'mainstream coins stabilize first, altcoins are still falling' — this pattern allowed her to avoid 90% of pitfalls when bottom-fishing in 2023, and she still got her ETH at 1500.
Even that brother who lost 8 figures has now learned to 'trade based on volatility': never enter when volatility is below 10%, cut positions in half when above 20% — this 'market temperament' was understood after losing 7 million, noted in his notebook: 'February 2024 SOL volatility 18%, heavily long got shaken out, lost 1.2 million.'
Ultimately, this line of work is a 'war of one person' — those who win have all learned to reconcile with themselves.
Have you ever seen a trader's fridge? Old Zhou's fridge always contains only frozen dumplings and Red Bull.
It's not that there's no time to buy, but when trading, he completely forgot he was hungry. One time he stared at the screen from 8 AM to 3 AM, only to realize at the moment of closing that his hand had been burned by a cigarette butt, not knowing when it happened. His wife said he 'came home like a ghost': staring at his phone during meals, suddenly pulling out a calculator to calculate positions while playing with the child, even dreaming of shouting 'stop-loss.'
The loneliness in this line of work is something outsiders cannot understand.
After making five consecutive profitable trades, he wanted to talk to someone but feared 'showing off would bring bad luck,' so he could only drink a beer while staring at the screen.
When he wanted to delete the software after losing, he couldn't find anyone in his contact list to say 'I lost again' — the pain of traders is like cryptocurrency, only those on the same frequency can decode it.
During family gatherings at the New Year, when relatives ask 'What do you do for a living?' you can only say 'I trade stocks,' unable to explain how important 'calculating funding rates at 3 AM' is.
But that brother who lost 8 figures sent a screenshot last week: the orders in his account had 3 take profits and 2 stop losses, overall making 2.3%. The caption was: 'For the first time, I feel that not losing is winning.'
Now he only makes 3 trades a day, with each stop-loss never exceeding 1% of the principal, and before bed, he writes in his notebook, 'Today I wasn't greedy, I didn't rely on luck.' I know, he hasn't been dulled down, but has sharpened his edges into armor — just like steel that has been repeatedly tempered by K lines, it has hurt, yet it has hardened.
In the end, I want to say: the difficulty of making a living from trading is never 'not learning indicators,' but 'not being able to change oneself.'
You have to wake up at 7 AM to write a review after being liquidated at dawn; you have to dare to place the 11th trade according to strategy after 10 consecutive losses; you have to transform the obsession of 'I want to get rich' into the solid belief of 'I can survive.'
That brother said: 'Now when I see K lines, I’m not panicked — if it rises, I take profit according to strategy; if it falls, I stop-loss according to discipline. It turns out that in trading, what matters in the end is not the technique, but whether you can live well with yourself.'
The road is difficult, but those who have walked it carry a light in their eyes, hiding a phrase: 'I finally won against myself.'
