At nearly four in the morning, my phone vibrated.

It is a screenshot - the account balance section, glaringly red, only 0.37U left.

The caption is just three words: "Is there still hope?"

I stared at the screen for a while and sent three words: "Don't open the market."

I have known him for six years. We stayed up all night playing games together in college, and last year he even shared a photo of his new car on social media, with a comment section full of "congratulations." Now this scene feels like watching someone else's life.

This is not his first time hitting zero. To be precise, it's the seventh time.

The first time, he invested 6000 yuan in contracts and turned it into 90,000 in three days. At that time, I was also excited and thought this guy really had some skills. But less than 72 hours later, the account was left with only 12,000.

At that time, he was still laughing and saying to me: "It's okay, the feeling is here, next time it will be stable."

I casually liked it at the time, without thinking much. Looking back now—that like was like handing him the next fuse.

Leverage, the most insidious aspect is not that it makes you lose money.

Instead, it packages the entire process as a challenge game.

If you do it right, you feel like you're the chosen one; if you do it wrong, the system directly liquidates you, not even giving you a chance to catch your breath. The most deadly part is – ten minutes after the liquidation, he can open another position. The only thought left in your mind is: "Catch a wave and I'll get it all back."

This goes on in a cycle. When the principal is gone, I swipe my credit card; when the credit card is maxed out, I borrow from friends. In the end, I can't even gather enough to lose, and only then does the screen finally quiet down.

What’s more terrifying is that he is still reviewing: "I just acted too slowly on the stop loss."

Hearing this, I was completely stunned—he still thought it was a technical issue and didn't realize he had already fallen into it.

The first thing to truly consider is not to study candlestick charts or memorize indicators.

It must be acknowledged that a harsh truth is: "I am not trading, I am addicted."

The second thing is to learn to accept the word 'slow'.

Block all channels that promote "get rich quick" schemes; accept the pace of being paid monthly; even accept the slow pace of haggling for two yuan at the vegetable market.

The day you can earn a hundred bucks all day without feeling tempted will be when you truly move on.

After that night, he really powered off his phone. He deleted all the apps with leverage features and switched to an old phone that could only make calls.

Three months later, when I saw him again, he was already working at a company with a monthly salary of just over 8,000, occasionally working overtime until 10 PM.

Someone asked him if he was tired.

He smiled: "It's much easier than staring at the market, at least I can sleep at night."

It wasn't the market that let him go, it was he who finally let himself go.

Most people are trapped in a loop, not because they don't work hard enough — but because they lack a truly awakening moment.

The market is always there, but a person only lives once.