A friend just told me that he worked hard doing futures contracts for a whole year last year, and then got liquidated when the market crashed recently.

I think many people who do futures contracts have a certain mindset—I used to have it too—which is that when you lose money, you want to earn it back, otherwise you feel unwilling to accept the loss. You become trapped by sunk cost fallacy.

The result? The more you continue, the bigger your losses might become.

Sometimes stop-loss is crucial. People who can overcome sunk cost fallacy and execute stop-loss are truly exceptional.

I've been saying since 2022 that I needed to transition to US stocks trading—my long-time followers know this. But I didn't actually do it myself. I kept thinking I'd do one more cycle of cryptocurrency, planning to switch to US stocks after this cycle. Back then, US stocks were just a side play while crypto was the main focus. But in recent years, cryptocurrency has become completely different from before. The market manipulation and retail destruction has gotten worse and worse. Of course, I can also say my skills aren't good enough—I admit I'm not as skilled as others.

By early 2025, after Chinese New Year, I made a firm decision to completely leave cryptocurrency.

My personal reflection and summary is this: losing money isn't the most important thing. What matters is wasting time and missing out on the epic bull run in US stocks.

If I had started US stocks one year earlier, I would have one more year of experience and understanding. The 2022-2023 US stock market was the beginning of an epic rally. Trading crypto during that time meant completely missing that historic bull run. By the time I started in 2025, prices were already at very high levels. Fortunately, Trump crashed the market in April, giving me a cheap opportunity to buy the dip.

For example, if I had started US stocks in 2020, I'd have 7 years of experience now—that would be completely different. US stocks can be played indefinitely; the more experience, the better. Crypto is just one phase of human speculation. Eventually, it will become unplayable.