Win or Stay Poor 🔰

Win or Stay Poor

Not financial advice. If you lose your lunch money, don't @ me.

After a pretty long break I've lately started to trade perps more actively. And it got me thinking about when I first started in 2018. Back then, some of my favorite traders dropped knowledge that forever changed how I approach markets. I've never been much of a writer. But I've always felt indebted to my predecessors and feel a deep desire to pay it forward. Let's give it a shot.

One lesson that always stuck with me was about the biology of winning.

How it's literally hardwired into everything that's ever lived.

When two lobsters fight, the winner gets a hormone spike. He walks around pumped full of serotonin and testosterone thinking he's Lobster Chad. Meanwhile the loser curls up, sulks, and settles into beta lobster cope mode.

This isn't some random nature documentary bullshit. The slightly schizo but mostly right Jordan Peterson talked about this for a reason. Winning literally rewires your brain. Your posture changes. Your confidence skyrockets. You start seeing opportunities everywhere instead of threats. It's evolutionary programming that goes back millions of years, and your brain doesn't give a shit whether you're fighting for territory or fighting the market.

This isn't AI-generated believe it not. This is actually his thumbnail for a youtube video lol

Trading works exactly like this.

Every small win gives you a biochemical high. Every green trade sharpens your edge and sets you up to win again. But in my experience most newer traders do the complete opposite of what actually works.

They chase moonshots instead of stacking boring gains. They flex screenshots instead of booking clear profits. They hold through 80% drawdowns calling it "conviction." They revenge trade after losses instead of stepping back. They compare their modest 2% unrealized PNL to some KOL's 10x insider trade.

The actual winners are quietly stacking boring gains and letting time do the heavy lifting.

Why Your Brain Wants You To Stay Broke

When you lose, your serotonin crashes and your shoulders slump. You start seeing danger everywhere. Your risk assessment gets completely fucked because your brain thinks you're now at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy.

So what do broke traders do? They try to win it all back in one trade. They increase position sizes. They chase the next shiny sub 60k mcap shitter. They listen to telegram signals from some former fortnite scammer.

Good traders do the opposite. They take the loss, spend maybe five minutes figuring out what went wrong, then move on. They know one red day among twenty green days is just noise. They protect their psychology more aggressively than they protect their portfolio.

I watch this play out constantly. Bro loses a trade, then immediately tries to make it back with 20% of his stack on a bundled shitter he found on the pulse page. It's like watching someone punch themselves in the face repeatedly and wondering why their nose hurts.

Compound Interest Is Always Under-appreciated

Most people can't wrap their heads around compound interest because it starts slow and feels boring. You make $50 on a $10k account and think "this is pointless." But that's exactly why it works. Boring is profitable. Exciting is expensive.

Einstein called compound interest the eighth wonder of the world. The guy who figured out relativity was impressed by basic math. Think about that for a second.

You don't need to hit some magic number every single day. That's not how this works. Some days you make 1%. Some days you make nothing. Some days you lose a bit. The key is that over time, you're net positive more often than you're net negative.

Take Jordi Alexander (@gametheorizing) for example. I remember reading on @thiccyth0t's blog that he caps his networth gain to 2x~ a year and spends the rest of the time just vibing. He makes sure he doesn't overshoot or "peak." Those that make 100x trades generally don't keep their money for very long. Much like lottery and casino winners, they don't know how to handle it.

What Works

Take profits early. Forget diamond hands. The market doesn't care about your conviction. It cares about supply and demand. When you're green, book some profit. Every time. Even a little bit.

Document your wins. Screenshot every single one. Create a folder and look at it when you're having a bad day. Your brain needs evidence that you're a winner, not just abstract memories of that one time you made money. It's ok to flex realized PNL. It's usually a bad idea to flex unrealized PNL. Ask anyone that's been around long enough.

Control your leverage. Start with 1x or 2x. Only increase after you've proven you can be profitable without it. Leverage amplifies everything - including your stupidity.

Set daily targets, but make them realistic. Don't trade just to trade. Trade to hit your target and then log off. Go outside. Touch grass. The market will be there tomorrow, and it'll probably look completely different anyway.

Track your win rate. Keep a simple spreadsheet or use something like @CoinMarketMan, @tradestream_xyz or @AxiomExchange's native PNL page. If your win rate drops below 60%, something's broken. Fix your strategy.

Build rituals. Same setup, same time, same routine.

Your brain loves patterns.

Create a pre-market ritual that puts you in winner mode. Could be coffee, could be reviewing your rules, could be doing pushups. Doesn't matter.

The Hardest Part About Small Wins

Here's where most people fuck up when they start stacking small Ws: you have to make sure your losers don't balloon in size (Be a good loser, keep losses small. Best Loser Wins). Small wins means you have to keep your losers small as well.

In the beginning I struggled with this a lot. My equity curve looked like the thanksgiving turkey chart - bunch of small gains followed by one massive red candle that wiped out weeks of progress. It's probably the most challenging part of this whole approach, but it's non-negotiable. A strategy of small wins with big losses is just slow motion account destruction.

When You Lose (And You Will)

Here's what losers do: They blame manipulation. They switch strategies every week. They join Discord servers looking for "alpha." They become gambling addicts instead of treating this like a business.

Here's what winners do: They take the loss, learn whatever lesson there is to learn, and load up for tomorrow. They understand that trading is a marathon, not a sprint. They know that consistency beats intensity every single time.

One loss among dozens of wins barely moves the needle (Mismo approach que en Ranked games: Pokemon, Clash Royale, HearthStone. Tengo una estrategia y metodología para jugar la partida, y a parte un sistema para gestionar mi racha de victorias y derrotas. Stackeo victorias mientras estoy caliente y con momentum, hasta perder y encadenar 2 derrotas seguidas. Paro, respiro, y si juego y pierdo la 3a derrota consecutiva, desconecto, reseteo y evito Tilt. Mañana será otro día, respiro, desconecto, touch grass y volvemos al día siguiente con energía y pilas cargadas. El resultado es que mi Winrate es alto, aprovechando las rachas de victorias con momentum, y parando las rachas de pérdidas a la tercera consecutiva, con el seguro anti-Tilt. En trading tengo que hacerlo igual, gamificarlo y conseguir ese Winrate alto, y adicionalmente ganar más cuando gano de lo que pierdo cuando pierdo: Big Wins, small wins y small losses, nada de Big Losses).

How To Actually Make It

While everyone else is gambling on the next L1's dog coin, you could be building a strategy that actually works. While they're starring at their open positions all day, you could be hitting your target and going to the gym.

The real edge isn't some secret trading strategy. It's discipline. It's treating this like a business instead of a casino. It's understanding that the goal isn't to be right - it's to be profitable.

Most traders optimize for being right. Winners optimize for making money. There's a huge difference.

Getting rich slowly is boring. It's not sexy. Your shitposts wont go viral for making steady gains. But you know what's even less sexy? Being broke at 30 because you spent your 20s chasing 100x "conviction plays" that never came.

Most dudes posting Lambos on the timeline are broke. They hit one moonshot, flex on social media, then give it all back plus their original stack.

There are certainly many exceptions but for the most part the real winners are invisible.

Just Win

Small wins build momentum. Momentum gives you a flow state (Como en Pokemon y Clash Royal, misma sensación que Michael Sena en Formula 1, estado de FLUJO/FLOW, sensación de que voy sólo, juego automáticamente sabiendo que estoy tomando la mejor decisión posible con las cartas que tengo, en piloto automático, fluyendo y ejecutando rápido como un puto asesino. Dios llevaba el coche, lo sentí. Gamificar trading, ser disciplinado y ejecutar plan previo con invalidaciones meditadas y sopesadas sin miramientos ni influencia emocional, aprender a ir moviendo SLs dinámicamente, experiencia en ejecutar TPs anticipados, identificar set-ups idóneos para trade + ser paciente hasta que se den dichos set-ups, leer el momento del mercado, etc. hasta que salga solo y automático. Pulir y mejorar mis sistemas y estrategias hasta que los interiorice y salgan solos). Book the profit, boost the confidence, become the lobster who owns the rock.

Stop trying to prove you're smart. Start trying to prove you're disciplined.

Win or stay poor.

Link to the original tweet: https://x.com/0xVKTR/status/1936065385151053857