To see if a trader will lose money, just look at how many news items they want to engage with in a day. Iranian news, Visa layoffs, which altcoin is pumping—he wants to find a direction to trade on every single one. The market feeds you dozens of "opportunities" daily, 90% of which are noise, specifically designed to trap those itching to trade. The real edge isn't how many opportunities you can catch, but how many fake ones you can resist. You don't need to have a position on everything. Sometimes, staying out of the market is also a way to win.

After playing poker for so many years, the hardest lesson to teach newcomers is: folding is also a decision, and waiting is also an action. The real money-makers at the table fold about 80% of their hands, just waiting for that few strong hole cards, the right position, and the right opponents to go all in once. Trading is exactly the same. This kind of back-and-forth choppy market now means "you don't have a hand"—yet most people itch to bet at this time to prove they're in the game. Control your hands, save your bullets for the shot truly worth firing.

Many people think that being bearish means adding shorts whenever there is a rebound, but that's a gambler's move, not a trader's. My current bias is bearish, but the 15-minute chart is already oversold and the price is hugging the lower boundary of the range. At this position, I wouldn't add a single short—chasing it would just fuel a short squeeze. Taking large low-frequency positions means: I hold the direction, but I wait to add when it retraces to a comfortable level. Holding steady without action is also a form of betting. Those who rush to express their views often die on the right side of the trade.

Trump posted late at night saying Iran backed down and the strike was canceled. According to the script, the "war clouds dissipating" should be considered bullish, right? But $BTC didn't move an inch. This is exactly what I've been saying: when bad news disappears but the market can't rally, the problem isn't the news, it's the demand—nobody wants to buy at this price level. Those who are right about the direction feel most comfortable at this time: you don't need it to drop fast, you just need it not to go up. People chasing the rebound are handing you money, and the bears' logic hasn't been disproven by a single word.

Someone else is asking me if I want to copy the safe-haven trades based on the war headlines. After trading for so many years, the thing I trust the least is "trading based on news." By the time you see that news on your phone, the real money has already moved. News is there to explain the market, not to predict it. A truly skilled trader first looks at the market structure and how the funds are moving, then uses the news to confirm their judgment — not the other way around, being led into the market by headlines. Those who are slower end up taking other people's positions.

Feeling comfortable again!

The most frustrating moments in trading are often not losing money, but missing out on profits. When you truly lose money, you accept it and move on; but when a big market move happens and you only catch a small part of it, or you stay out of the market and watch it go, that feeling of "it should have been mine" is what easily makes people emotionally charged, chasing the market and revenge buying, only to give back all the profits they made before. In poker, we call this tilt. There is only one cure: realize you are tilted and step away from the table. Missing out on a move is not shameful, but blowing up your account out of revenge is.

Judging the direction correctly is just the beginning of this round, not the end. The real challenge is whether you can hold on when your unrealized profits pull back a bit. Many people get the direction right but get scared off by an intraday reverse spike, and when the market continues in the original direction, they are already out. As long as your stop loss is placed at a truly invalidation level, not just some arbitrary psychological price, then the fluctuations in between are just noise and shouldn’t make you exit. Get on the right train, then shut up and sit tight—that’s the hardest lesson to learn.

After doing this for a long time, you'll understand a counterintuitive fact: the real money is made on the few opportunities where you dare to place big bets and can hold on. For the remaining 90% of the time, what you should do is wait. The problem with retail investors is exactly the opposite—they spend a lot of energy trying to have a position every day, thinking that being out of the market is a waste, and end up shooting all the bullets that should be reserved for big opportunities on noise. Low frequency is not laziness, it's discipline. Only those who can wait deserve to place big bets.