Deepak

I lost around $500K last week. I want to share the story rather than hide it so hopefully a few of y’all who are going through something similar can learn from it, and maybe also help keep a few of you who haven’t experienced a big L yet from doing the same thing. It started with several big wins riding the market up the last month. I had good discipline with where I was building my positions, what my stops were, overall game plan, etc. on the front end. As the pace of the market picked up, a few things happened: 1.Rather than taking a bit of profit riding the positions up, I doubled down and continued to size them up. 2.I began opening new positions in names where I felt FOMO, but not as much conviction. Both of these things work fine on the way up, but when the market starts to tilt the other direction, you lose X amount more. 3.I hadn’t had a run like this in a while. I was so obsessed with managing what I had, I stopped sleeping. The more sleep deprived you are, the worse your decision making is. 4.I began to throw risk tolerance out the window, and used *where I was* when I was up as my new standard for where I felt like *I needed to be* when I was down. So after taking an L, I would size up to a point completely outside of my risk tolerance and make poor decisions because of it. At this point, I was fully tilted. I wasn’t thinking rationally. My emotions had taken over. 5.I felt insane FOMO because of where Bitcoin is, and how bullish I am on where we’re heading over the next couple of years. 6.I felt embarrassed if I wasn’t able to claw out of this, because of the size of my account, the number of followers I have, the highs of where my account has been in the past and how successful some of my friends on here are. I started selling positions I didn’t want to touch to get more capital to try and fight my way back. E.g. I sold my initial ARENA airdrop, which thankfully is only 15% of my total allocation, but it’s still so early in its lifespan and I’m so bullish on where it’s headed it hurt to touch it. It’s also a stake in a community, where although you believe you are doing it for the right reason at the time (your mind tilt justifies if you don’t do it, you won’t be able to have the $ you need to support them the way you want to) it comes off as a lack of belief in the project and community (which it isn’t). It’s only when you’ve had a bit of time to decompress and get untitled that you realize just how stupid you were. When it’s all said and done, I was completely humbled by the market, again. The issue is this a recurring theme for my time on here. Hard and fast runs up, followed by even harder and faster falls down. I came across a passage in the end of the book of Job in the Bible recently where after Job has lost EVERYTHING he humbles himself before God and acknowledges he’s nothing without Him. He trusts His plan. And it follows by saying “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.” It made me realize I have been trusting my own plan for far too long. Every up and down I’ve ever had, I’ve been able to tell myself it’ll be alright because I have the ability to turn nothing into something via trading. In the pursuit of this, I have sacrificed so much. I haven’t worked nearly as hard at other things because I’ve been so focused on this singular purpose, that in essence has trended toward degenerate gambling. It’s time for a change. (Continued below)