Last week, during a review session with my apprentice Xiao Lin, she suddenly slammed her phone on the table, eyes red and slapped her thigh: 'Sister! With 400,000 principal fully invested and leveraged, now there's less than 40,000 left!'
I handed over a cup of warm water, couldn't help but roll my eyes: 'At first, when I asked you to try with 80,000, what did you say? "Master, you are too conservative, when the opportunity comes, we have to go all in"—this statement is still fresh in my mind, have you forgotten?'
She scratched her head in frustration and stomped her feet: 'At that time, my mind was full of "losing money is a thousand times worse than being stuck", the risk control you mentioned went in one ear and out the other, now that I think about it, I really want to slap myself twice!'
Actually, I've heard this phrase no less than ten times. I’ve mentored more than a dozen waves of beginner students, and 90% of them started with a 'gamble' mentality—always thinking they can precisely catch the wind and avoid all crashes, until the real money turns into a string of depreciated numbers, before they admit that 'the market is not an amusement park.'
The most common mistake beginners make: treating 'coincidences' as 'targeting' and treating 'fiddling' as 'effort.'
Xiao Lin stared at the candlestick chart on my phone and suddenly asked: “Sister, is it true that big money is watching us retail investors? I buy and it drops, I just cut losses and it goes up, it feels like I'm being monitored!”
I pointed at the curve on the screen that was continuously fluctuating 24 hours a day and laughed: “The trading volume in the cryptocurrency market is in the hundreds of billions every day; our little positions are like a piece of floating duckweed in a pond—it's not that the big players are targeting you, it's that you take your own operations too seriously.”
This is the most typical 'self-attribution bias' for beginners: when they make money, they believe they are 'gifted,' and when they lose, they blame the 'dark hand of the market.' But the truth is, what you call 'precisely being cut' is merely a coincidence in the normal fluctuations of the market; your 'efforts' of staying up late to gather information and watching the market until dawn are hardly worth mentioning in the face of trends.
Practical reminder: beginners shouldn't get obsessed with the 'watching the market curse'—the more frequently you operate, the easier it is to be misled by short-term fluctuations. Remember: the market is not about 'guessing big or small,' but about 'seeing direction.' When the direction is right, lying down is better than blindly fiddling.
The way to make money is hidden in 'simple methods': discipline is 100 times more important than technique.
“So how do I turn things around now?” Xiao Lin asked urgently, her voice changing. I slowly took a sip of warm water: “The way to make money in the cryptocurrency market is simple to the point that no one believes it—buy in batches, set stop-losses, and hold on.”
She was stunned: “Is that it? I thought there was some exclusive secret!”
“This is it, but 90% of people can't do it.” I counted on my fingers and said to her: “I once knew a finance professor who worked on quantitative models and technical analysis, and ended up losing 60% in six months; while a lady selling fruits in the neighborhood invested 5000 yuan monthly in mainstream cryptocurrencies and ended up doubling her money in three years. The issue isn't knowledge, but the mindset of 'accepting slow money.'”
Now many beginners keep staring at those so-called 'hundred-fold small coins,' thinking that not buying means losing out. But have you ever thought about it? Among 100 coins with 'hundred-fold expectations,' 99 are traps for retail investors, and the remaining one you might not even be able to hold on to. Instead, those mainstream assets that have been validated by the market, as long as you are not greedy or anxious, set a stop-loss of 10%-15% after building positions in batches, and hold for the long term, the probability of making money is far higher than 'betting on altcoins.'
To put it bluntly: those who can survive in the cryptocurrency market are all 'those who can stay steady.'
I asked Xiao Lin: “If I told you now that mainstream cryptocurrencies have stabilized at a key level, can you buy in batches and then uninstall the trading software without acting even if you're down 30%?” She fell silent—this is exactly the hurdle that beginners find hardest to cross.
It's like someone who has never touched a fishing rod thinks that fishing requires 'casting fast and reeling hard.' True experts understand: the hardest part is stabilizing the rod amidst the wind and waves, enduring the loneliness of waiting. The cryptocurrency market is no different; no matter how many techniques you have, they cannot compare to a strict discipline; no matter how timely the news, it cannot compare to a steady heart.
If you are also a new retail investor, stop looking for some 'get rich quick' secrets—first remember three sentences: don't be greedy for short-term gains, don't act impulsively, and don't believe in 'doubling overnight' nonsense. The market is not short of opportunities, but it lacks those who can survive until the opportunities arise.
Follow me, this 'steady as an old dog' analyst; every week I share the pitfalls I encountered while mentoring and the lessons learned. Next time, let's talk about 'how to not get up at midnight to check the market when down 50%'—after all, those who can sleep well can make long-term profits in the cryptocurrency market~
