$Lobster Trading, the first thing you need to overcome is loss aversion, frequent trading, and purchasing contracts worth 2x or more. All three of these will expose you to massive losses. The reason why major players aren't afraid of price declines is because they have the ability to push the price back up. As long as they don't sell, they won't incur losses from price drops. In fact, when prices fall, they can lower their cost basis through adding positions and gain more profits. Retail traders, however, don't have this capability or time cost advantage. Once the price drops, they will likely cut losses and sell at a high probability of loss, and may not even have the capacity to buy on dips. The difference between these two is the difference between chip theory and price theory. But just looking at chips isn't enough—you need to look at the major players' cost basis, otherwise they might use large amounts of chips to mislead you.