Leverage is like a mirror; the greed you have amplifies it, and the fear you feel also amplifies it.

People involved in futures trading are all kinds. Some start with a capital of $1,000 and gradually grow it to tens of thousands of dollars. Others, within a year, manage to turn $5,000 into nearly $100,000 through sheer force. And the result? One liquidation, and everything is gone.

Whenever I ask them why they keep going, the answer is almost the same: "Give me one more chance, I can turn it around." I've heard this too many times. When profitable, greed magnifies infinitely; when losing, fear takes over completely—that's the most raw form of a trader in the futures market.

**The ceiling of cognition is the ceiling of your account**

Most people entering the market don't even understand the basics before recklessly placing orders. They can't tell the difference between long and short, and have no idea about the difference between USDT-margined and coin-margined contracts. They don't know where support and resistance are on the candlestick chart. What is funding rate? What is basis risk? They are completely unaware.

Entering the market like this is like crossing a tightrope with blindfolds.

I have personally seen a friend during last year's BTC crash. Because he didn't understand how leverage works, he opened a 10x long position outright. What's worse, he had no idea he needed to set a stop-loss. As soon as the market moved against him, his account was wiped out instantly, and his principal evaporated in an instant.

The futures market has no mercy. You cannot earn money beyond your level of understanding—that's an iron law. Money earned by luck? In the end, it will be lost through skill or lack thereof.

**Mindset is the final battlefield**

In this market, the opponent you can't beat is not the market itself, but yourself.

When making money, greed takes over, always thinking about getting rich overnight, and setting take-profit orders that are essentially useless. When losing money, fear takes control of the mind, desperately trying to recover losses, but only sinking deeper. When the mindset is chaotic, decisions become chaotic. When decisions are chaotic, the account follows suit. It’s a vicious cycle.