In the time it takes to eat a meal, my account balance was slashed in half from 8,000.

It was the winter of 2023. I stared at that almost vertical plummet on the screen, my mind completely blank. Half a down payment for an apartment—gone, just like that. My mouse hovered over the "Exit" button for a long time, but in the end, I didn’t click it—since I’d already paid such an expensive tuition, I had to learn something from it.

Three years have passed. Now, some people say my trades are "as precise as a robot." It sounds great, but they don’t know how this composure was forged—behind every trading rule is a real loss in my account.

The path of digital asset contracts is never a speed game.
Surviving is ten thousand times more important than making quick profits.

I set three hard rules for myself, wrote them on a sticky note, and kept them there for three years:
• Never lose more than 2% per trade
• No more than two trades per day—if I hit the limit, I’m done
• As soon as profits hit 50%, withdraw the principal immediately

Does that sound conservative? It’s exactly this "conservatism" that helped me preserve my capital through several wild swings last year. Those who thought the rules were a hassle are still in the group asking, "How do I recover my losses?"

**Seventy percent of the time is waiting, thirty percent is trading**

A lot of people get itchy fingers the moment they open their trading app, desperate to make a move every minute.

I’m the opposite now—at least seventy percent of my screen time each day is spent "watching the show." Staring at the indicators narrowing slowly, waiting for volume to pick up—it’s like fishing. If the float doesn’t move, I don’t pull the rod.

There was a wave last summer that I still remember vividly. At the time, SO