The night my account balance dropped to 1200, I stared at the fluctuating numbers and almost smashed my mouse. Who would have thought that now this account would be steadily sitting at 600,000? No influencer was calling the shots, and there was no secret insider info—it was just me, grinding in front of the screen, learning through bitter, hard-earned experience.

The cruelest thing in this circle isn’t market crashes; it’s those so-called “experts” who treat you like a crop to be harvested. I was a typical victim in the winter of 2022—I couldn’t even read MA lines or MACD. Someone in the group would shout, “It’s still not too late to get in now!” and I’d go all in without a second thought. By the time I stopped my losses and exited, my hands were shaking so much I could barely hold the mouse. Sixty percent of my principal evaporated in three months. One night, I looked at my trading records and realized: others make money from the knowledge gap, while I was just paying tuition fees.

After that, I made a decision: quit all signal groups, delete all fancy indicator software, and keep only the most basic charting tools. I printed out historical K-lines and covered my desk with them, studying them like prepping for an exam—what happened behind this long bearish candle? What were the warning signs before a reversal? When I got too tired, I’d nap at the desk for twenty minutes, then during the day, continue to break down price action into 15-minute slices for review. I filled three dense notebooks, and over two hundred hand-drawn trend charts stacked up like medical records.

Let me share a few survival rules directly:

Never let a single coin take up more than 20% of your portfolio. Never put all your eggs in one basket. “Go all in to make a comeback”—just listen and move on. Survival is more important than getting rich quick.

Be ruthless with your stop-losses—