Other people's coins are skyrocketing, while the coins you buy plunge as soon as you enter. The coins others shorted have multiplied several times, but the coins you shorted got trapped at a high level. Others become legends overnight by getting rich, while you go to zero overnight and become cannon fodder. Investors who can maintain long-term profitability in the market are definitely those who go against the market; they are not smarter than others, but better at fighting their instincts.

The first counter-instinct move: admit defeat in advance. When ordinary investors lose 10%, their brains say to wait and it will come back. Long-term winners set exit conditions before building their positions. Once the stop-loss is triggered, there are no exceptions. This isn’t because they don’t feel pain, but because they preempt the pain. During the rule-setting phase, there’s no room for thought—only obedience during execution.

The second counter-instinct move: hold steady in boredom. 90% of the market time is boring sideways consolidation, but the human dopamine system hates boredom. It needs stimulation, action, and the feeling of doing something. So retail investors trade frequently, each time feeling they are seizing an opportunity. But the more they trade, the more they lose. Long-term winners understand a counterintuitive principle: in the market, not making a decision itself is the most important decision.

The third counter-instinct move: enter during panic. When the market crashes, headlines are full of collapse, the world seems to end, and social media is filled with cries of panic selling. At this moment, every nerve screams to run away. But history always repeats itself: the market’s lowest point almost always occurs at the peak of panic. Buffett said, “Be greedy when others are fearful.” Everyone can memorize this truth, but few can truly do it because it requires acting against human nature—like telling yourself not to run out of the building during an earthquake, but to walk into it. Every muscle protests, but you must go against the flow.

Financial markets are systems that punish human nature. Your fear and greed, herd mentality, overconfidence, and loss aversion—every survival instinct written in your genes—turn into a penalty ticket in the market. The few survivors are not endowed with extraordinary talent; rather, they have built an external system—using rules to replace intuition, discipline to cover emotions, and processes to bypass instincts.