The most heartbreaking thing about this game in the market is that: good news often turns into bad news once it's fully priced in. Recently, this round of sharp decline, frankly, is institutions playing with retail investors' expectations.

The end of the government shutdown sounds like good news, right? But Bitcoin dropped from $68,000 to $62,000. The reason is simple—during the shutdown, safe-haven funds accumulated and exited the market, while retail investors kept chasing higher prices, only to be precisely hit.

Looking at the Fed's 25 basis point rate cut, retail investors added positions overnight, but Bitcoin opened high and then declined, with only a 0.3% increase in a single day. Why? Because the expectation of rate cuts had already been fully digested by big institutions. When the news actually materialized, they had already completed their layout, and retail chasing the rally became their opposing force for selling pressure.

The most classic example is Bitcoin surging to $70,000—the entire network FOMOed to the top, but then a three-day crash followed. This is no coincidence. What the market truly wants is not the good news itself, but news that exceeds expectations. When everyone is shouting about good news, institutions have already packed up and exited.

To be honest, the difference between big players and retail investors is this: retail investors go all-in on good news, while institutions look at whether the good news can break consensus expectations. Understanding this is key to avoiding being harvested.