I tried once—I chased a meme coin while the narrative was really heating up, with a bunch of “smart money” on-chain showing off. I thought, “No matter what, I’ve got to get a little of that broth.” In the end, within half an hour it pulled back, and it cut so deep it actually hurt.

Later, when I went back to review everything, I realized that day’s gas was especially volatile. Even though the trade pool depth looked okay, in reality the slippage ate up several percentage points. Plainly put, the order-scheduler was just siphoning off the value. I really can’t believe it—when retail rushes in, it’s basically handing fees to the miners, and then the MEV bots come along and just rip you apart in no time.

Anyway, I’ve learned my lesson now. Whenever I used to look at those so-called “hot” narratives, I’d calculate first the buy/sell book depth and the curvature of the AMM curve—especially in places where liquidity is thin. I set my stop-losses a bit tighter too; for example, if it’s down 10%, I’m out. At least that way, my heart doesn’t have to suffer.