Recently, while monitoring the market, I pondered a question and wanted to discuss it with everyone.

Many say retail investors will never turn their fortunes around in their lifetime, often blaming it on a lack of knowledge. But my observation is different — what truly traps retail investors is the exhaustion of their mindset.

Look at what happens in the market every day: a certain coin originally has all expectations of a tenfold potential, but after three days of sideways movement, all expectations are immediately cut in half to two times. The fundamentals of the coin haven't changed, the logical chain remains intact, only the confidence that people had has been worn down. The stories of coins like $BTC, $BNB, and $DASH are replayed every day.

Have you noticed? The real killer of a bull market is not a sharp decline.

A sharp drop might hurt for a few days, but a sideways market will make you doubt everything. When the price drops from 100 to 1, you dare not buy the dip; when it falls to 0.6, you outright dismiss it. You think you're afraid of losing money, but what you're really afraid of is holding on.

This is funny — biting your teeth and not moving during a dip isn’t called diamond hands; it’s just a reaction that’s too slow. What are true diamond hands? It’s feeling uneasy when you’re making money on paper, unable to sit still after a tenfold increase, wanting to run after a threefold rise, feeling more guilty the more you earn.

Retail investors are never afraid of losing money; they’re afraid of making money.

The strategy of the big players is so simple and brutal — slowly eroding retail investors’ confidence over years. Expectations are ground down from a hundredfold to twofold, which should have wiped out the entire bull run, but in the end, they only dare to have a little oil on their lips. When everyone is only focused on tiny gains and dares not think about the future, that’s exactly when the market manipulators start to aggressively push the prices.

Some say there hasn’t been a rise in recent years. But that’s not a lack of growth — it’s that future growth has been gradually stolen from retail investors’ pockets.

A bull market doesn’t appear out of nowhere; it’s forged during declines, sideways movements, and through the torment that makes people grit their teeth. Most people's stories are very similar — dying before a sharp drop, or dying before a sharp rise, or more often, dying at the phrase: "I’ve waited so long for hope, but I damn well don’t dare to enter."

The cruelest part of the market isn’t "dropping to a level where no one dares to buy," but "rising to a level where no one dares to hold."

I’ve seen too many such people at the beginning of the year — those who failed in emotional trading, those whose talents were worn down by cycles. In the end, it’s not the smartest or the most accurate predictors who survive, but those who always know what they’re doing and can withstand the test of cycles.