I know a guy who slid from a capital of 100,000 yuan all the way down to just 3,000 last year. During that period, he was completely dazed.

His trading behavior was exactly like most retail investors: opening dozens of positions every day, losing more to fees than to market swings; seeing someone in a community group show off a screenshot of a 100x coin, getting impulsive and going all in, only to be buried the next day.

At his lowest, he was staring at the screen at 4 a.m., ashtray piled up like a mountain, eyes bloodshot, muttering over and over: "Was I born to be a sucker?"

Eventually, he couldn't take it anymore and came to me. I gave him one piece of advice: don't act like a machine gun spraying everywhere—be like a sniper and wait for your shot.

What does that mean?

Wait. If the trend isn’t clear, don't act; if the signals are fuzzy, don’t fumble around. Only strike at clear breakout points, using at least the four-hour chart as your time frame. It's better to miss ten opportunities than to make one wrong move.

No more than three trades a day. Feeling antsy? Go for a run instead of randomly clicking the mouse.

Then I taught him the "laddered position build-up" trick:

Never put more than 10% of total capital into the first position; only add more when you have floating profits; when you’ve made 20%, take half off the table and let the rest ride the trend; if you lose more than 5%, cut it immediately—don’t try to average down.

People who fantasize about making it all back usually die hoping for luck.

But technique is only half of it—the more important part is discipline.

Two consecutive stop-losses? Shut down the computer for the day.

Review every night: break down the losing trades to find what went wrong, extract the core logic from the winning ones.

The market is brutal, but there’s always a pattern behind the brutality.

First, survive. Then think about making money.

A real comeback never relies on betting on miracles—it’s about executing properly, over and over again.