Crypto survivors rely not on precise predictions, but on knowing how to protect themselves during market fluctuations.

Let's talk about the most practical issue in contract trading: correctly judging the direction, but ending up with a zero account balance. I've suffered big losses from this. A few years ago, within just half a year, I had an unrealized loss of 800,000. The most painful part was that I correctly identified several major trend directions, but still got liquidated. Watching the numbers drop to zero—that feeling is terrible. Later, through review, I realized that I wasn't losing because of a misunderstanding of the market, but because I fell into the carefully designed traps set by the market manipulators.

**The first pitfall: rushing into the market, hitting a perfect trap**
When a trend shows signs, rushing to enter the market en masse, going all-in at the breakout. The result? The big players quickly counterattack with a spike, directly shaking out retail traders. The logic behind this is—most of the time, the market is in consolidation, and after a trend ends, it usually enters a long-term sideways phase. In a leveraged environment, even if your market direction is correct, entering at the wrong time can still be deadly. The biggest trick of the manipulators is to create fake breakouts in advance, attracting retail traders to chase at the wrong points. By the time the price breaks through a key level, you realize too late—you've already become the "bag holder" for the big players.

**The second pitfall: setting stop-losses too rigidly, paying unnecessary fees**
I used to rigidly set stop-losses at 3% or 5%, thinking that would lock in risk. Little did I know that in high-volatility contract environments, such mechanical stop-losses are basically a gift to the manipulators. Experiencing multiple false breakdowns that hit my stop-loss three or four times made me understand this principle.

True risk management isn't about black-and-white stop-loss levels; it's about adjusting flexibly according to market structure. Fixed stop-losses only cause you to be shaken out frequently, and in the end, you find that the market moves in your expected direction only after you've exited.

Stories in the crypto world often go like this: you get the direction right, but execute incorrectly, and the cost is your entire net worth.