From a $400,000 Loss to Investment New Heights: A Trader's Confession

The market is an interesting entity. It often rewards those misbehaviors, but in the end, it will always return to the mean. Those who never consider this will ultimately suffer and become humble.

Recently, someone asked me how I started from scratch, step by step achieved stable profits, surpassed past performance, and set new highs for my investment portfolio.

In short: deep surrender, foolish mistakes, and luck.

My "zero" is not quite the same as others, but there are similarities as well. It has never been literally nothing at all, but rather a spiritual collapse, a complete surrender of oneself.

I failed in all my attempts and had to slowly crawl out from the dark abyss. Then, I started over. You may not know if I'm acting. I'm not, but you don't have to believe me either.

I have never systematically written down these experiences, just sharing some fragments here and there over the years. My friends and those who have been following me for a long time all know what has happened. I have transformed from a "foolish top signal" into "Dyme, who now has a clear understanding of the market."

Unless you can understand the pain I have gone through, you will not gain any useful information from this article. So, fasten your seatbelt, we are about to embark on a journey. This will be a long story.

If you don't want to listen to my boring story, you can jump straight to "the highlights of ( that you want to see )". It's time to sort through these experiences.

2019

After working for about four and a half years in a job I didn't like, I finally resigned. I have been a firm supporter of Bitcoin for many years. However, seeing others make money through leveraged trading made me want to give it a try, so I plan to take six months off work to focus on learning trading.

At that time, I was completely clueless about chart analysis and trading, yet I began to try options and stock trading, even learning to draw lines on the charts. Anyone who remembers my early charts knows they were terrible, and my judgment was often wrong. More importantly, I had no concept of risk control at all.

However, I realize that understanding market signals seems to be becoming increasingly important. I have been fiddling with those amateur-level charts, and since 2017, some of my online friends have been getting better at this.

Many of us became very wealthy in 2017, but as Bitcoin plummeted by 80%, wealth slipped through our fingers again. I imagine I'm not the only one who thought, "It's time to learn chart analysis so that I won't suffer such heavy losses again."

In 2019, I had about two to three thousand followers, most of whom were enthusiasts in the field of cryptocurrency.

I didn't enter this field to become famous; I just want to focus on trading for six months and learn some basics. For example, techniques like chart patterns and moving averages. I don't know which are useful and which aren't. But I have to try them anyway.

I have savings that can sustain my living for six months, and I can also receive unemployment benefits. In the foreseeable future, my life is secured.

In August 2019, considering my years of service, I asked my employer to dismiss me. It is well known that they never oppose claiming unemployment benefits. They agreed.

Unfortunately, shortly after that, Bitcoin reached its peak in 2019, and the market fluctuated and remained flat until mid-2020. It was truly the worst timing, and I happened to resign at that moment, fully dedicating myself to trading.

I finally have time to think, to learn, and to do those things that I never had time for while working forty to fifty hours a week. Of course, I also have to bear all the risks and downsides that come with this freedom.

I started to take action. I traded call options on the S&P 500 index, speculated on stocks, and studied charts every day, trying to find ways to earn at least 100 to 500 dollars a day. In the year before 2020, the cryptocurrency market was bleak, and I only had sporadic profits, but fortunately, I persevered.

If I hadn't been a complete newbie at the time, the trading environment during that period was actually quite good.

Year 2020

Everything is going quite smoothly, as I log into my account every day to share my terrible ( opinions, and my follower count has increased. I occasionally make a profit, and my account balance is generally on the rise. People appreciate that I can share some valuable information online, as not everyone has the time to think about these ) after all, they still have to work (. Although I have lost a lot of money, I can always quickly recover my losses. For a newcomer, this is already considered acceptable.

Leveraged trading has become my way of life. I stare at 15-minute charts, trading with 20x leverage, desperately trying to make some gains from the market, until February 20th when my position reached its highest price, I finally believed that I was doing quite well in trading.

Then, the "nuclear weapon" of the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

Almost in the same week, my unemployment benefits also expired.

So, my original plan to study for a while and then find a decent job instantly turned into a bubble. It felt like the end of the world - a new type of virus has appeared.

I managed to short the market during the crash triggered by the pandemic, using 0.5 Bitcoin and turning it into 1 Bitcoin with 50x leverage. That week, only this went smoothly; my stocks were severely hit, and I was pretty sure my income was doomed.

It seems that fate has deliberately arranged for me to fully immerse myself in trading.

Fortunately, Jerome ), the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (, and his "money printer" saved the world.

What happened next is known to everyone. The market soared for a year. It was truly a peak period of "only up, no down". Although the market can be profitable, it is also absurdly ridiculous.

![Trader's Testimony: How I Achieved Enlightenment from Losing 400,000 Dollars to a New High in Holdings?])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-843923ffb67ad76b56d52ee6e90c6336.webp(

FTX

What is more exciting than an upward market is leveraged trading. I have some experience, but it's very limited, and I know very little about the macro environment. All I know is that Jerome is printing money, and the market will definitely rise as a result.

Then, our "savior" has come, and he will lead us into a paradise, and he will never do anything terrifying.

At that time, we had no idea that FTX was about to take us on a "journey" that we would remember for a lifetime.

I deposited about 4000 to 5000 dollars into FTX, purchasing FTT)FTX platform tokens ( multiple times at prices ranging from 2 to 4 dollars.

FTT has risen by 3000%. I suddenly have 40,000 to 50,000 dollars in my margin account. I've never had so much money before. ) This is the first warning sign (

I have deposited more funds again and want to engage in more leveraged trading because my FTT is staked and cannot be used as collateral. At that time, I was already emotionally invested in the FTX ecosystem.

The day my number of fans reached 10,000 was exactly the day the "only rise and not fall" market began. This world really can always bring surprises.

I transformed from someone who only replies to others' tweets into a somewhat well-known person.

In the coming months, despite the absurdly good market conditions, my physical and mental health deteriorated. The lockdown policy in my area is extremely strict. My weight skyrocketed, and I only went out two or three times a week. My daily routine is a mess. I became almost familiar with the delivery person from a certain food delivery platform, consuming 4000 to 5000 calories of food each day to cope with the despair and misfortune brought by the pandemic.

Those days were terrible.

But I have made a fortune in the market, I can pay all my bills, and all my assets are rising, so I keep increasing my investment.

I often use leverage of 10 to 20 times. Sometimes, I can make 40,000 dollars, and other times, I can also lose 20,000 dollars.

I also engage in lending services, conduct perpetual contract trading for profits, and blindly invest in various emerging altcoins ) such as COPE (.

I often stay up late because I don't like getting up early, and since I don't have a job, I start staying up until the market opens, make a few trades, and then sleep until 4 PM.

This doesn't do much good for my health.

In addition, I also earned a decent income by referring others to register. During a few weeks at the peak, I could make $1000 in a day.

I used this money for trading and also made up for some losses.

I caught a few upward trends of Dogecoin, SOL, Bitcoin, and various altcoins.

I am a typical "genius" of a bull market.

The market has rewarded me.

My highest account balance on a certain trading platform is approximately $250,000, mainly thanks to SOL, FTT, and Bitcoin.

Later, the platform's founder reduced the daily withdrawal limit for accounts that had not undergone KYC ) verification from $9,000 to $2,000. Looking back now, this may have been the first signal of the legal disputes he would later find himself in, but who knows?

I withdraw money every few days, but that money is actually still stuck on the platform, and I am still greedy, wanting to earn more. I calculated that it would take about 120 days to withdraw all the money, and I would have to log into my account every day to perform the withdrawal operation.

Part of the responsibility lies with the platform's new regulations, but it is also on me. Because there was a moment when I really thought: "I should withdraw this $250,000 to improve my life."

I could have withdrawn all my money before the platform went bankrupt.

Even after the market peaked in November 2021, I continued to gamble. I was no longer trading, but going against the trend. Even when the market buying power was exhausted, I was still countering the Bitcoin cycle.

Every day brings new losses, and with my constant withdrawals and losses, my account balance quickly reached zero.

I lost two-thirds of my funds on the platform because I forced trades. Most of my trading career has been spent in a "only rise and no fall" market, and no one reminded me to change my strategy, except for Jim and Insilico. At that time, I thought they were just annoying bears, but they were among the few who accurately identified the top. For this, they deserve praise.

During that time, there were no once-in-a-lifetime market opportunities, only endless pain.

Year 2022

The situation has worsened.

In the first week of 2022, one of the most important people in my life who raised me - my grandmother passed away.

We have known that this day would come, but it hasn't made it any easier to accept. She has been in pain for a long time, and we feel a bit of solace that she can finally rest.

The family member has passed away, the prospects are bleak, and the market still shows no signs of an upward trend.

It was purely by luck; a few months later, I inherited a sum of money. Not much, but it's still something.

Because the source of this money is special, I have a deep reverence for it. But in any sense, this money is not enough to change my life.

So, like a gambler, I tried to invest in dividend stocks to earn income at my father's suggestion, but within four to five months, I lost 20%.

Obviously, during an interest rate hike cycle, no one wants dividend stocks.

I don't want to take risks with this money anymore.

So I deposited the cash.