Retail investors can survive only by relying on one thing—discipline. Everything else is just bragging.

I still remember the recent surge in Ethereum last week. Staring at the screen, fingers on the stop-loss button, the price kept falling, hitting my stop-loss level. Less than ten minutes after closing the position, bam, a direct V-shaped reversal, soaring 8%. It was so frustrating. It’s like you just threw away a key, only to find it opens a winning safe.

Veteran traders in the crypto space have all been through this. Just after stopping out, the price bounces back. The market seems to be deliberately messing with your positions. But it’s not bad luck—that’s psychological warfare.

**Why does the price always rebound after a stop-loss?**

It may seem like coincidence, but there’s a pattern. The market makers are playing the "stop hunt" game. They intentionally push the price down to trigger a large number of retail stop-loss orders, then instantly reverse it. This is most common during low liquidity periods, where within minutes, many leveraged traders get liquidated.

The key point is this: most retail stop-losses are clustered at just a few price levels. It’s obvious from the order book. Market makers have big data and can clearly see where the "stop-loss clusters" are, then target those levels to smash. Your stop-loss isn’t triggered by chance; it’s an inevitable part of market manipulation.

Data speaks—more than 30% of extreme volatility in Bitcoin futures markets is caused by this kind of manipulation. Such situations are especially frequent in the cryptocurrency market.

Once you understand this logic, you can truly survive.