Woken up in the middle of the night by WeChat, student Xiao Yang sent seven or eight voice messages: "I really suspect this platform is monitoring me. Every time I buy, it falls big; just as I cut loss, it flies up again..."

Hearing his voice break down, I suddenly remembered my foolish self back in 2019.

That year I focused on a certain public chain token, buying in at 0.08 USD. When it rose to 0.12 USD, I thought "I'll wait for it to hit 0.15". As a result, it retraced to 0.1 USD and I panicked, quickly adding to my position. Even more ridiculous was that every time I made a move, the price seemed to be magically plummeting. After five rounds of chaotic operations, my initial capital of 1500 USD evaporated to 400 USD.

At that time, I really went to argue with customer service: "Did you sell my trading data to the big player?"

Later, I met the market maker Old Wu, and I showed him my trading records. This guy laughed so hard that tears came out: "Bro, your amount of funds can't even make a splash in the market."

He pulled out the depth data from that time for me to see—within the range of 0.08 to 0.12 US dollars for that coin, there were dozens of big orders at the level of tens of millions of US dollars hanging densely. My little position? The robots probably wouldn't even recognize it when they were scanning orders.

At that moment I understood: the so-called "the market is targeting me" is purely retail investors scaring themselves.

There are three deadly thinking traps behind this illusion:

**First, selective memory.**
You only remember the ten times it fell right after you bought, but forget that the five times you sold too early were actually because you couldn't hold on. The human brain is naturally vengeful; the pain of loss is magnified threefold, while the pleasure of profit is forgotten in an instant.

**Second, causality is reversed.**
It's not that it falls just because you bought it; it was already falling, and you insisted on catching the falling knife. Those who chase high prices and cut losses always feel that the market is playing tricks on them, but in reality, they are using emotions to replace judgment.

**Third, overestimate one's influence.**
The biggest flaw of retail investors is thinking they are very important. Orders worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars don't even make a ripple in a market with daily trading volumes in the billions. For market makers to manipulate the market, what they need is capital in the millions or tens of millions for the game, not to focus on your small positions.

Looking back, it wasn't bad luck that caused my losses, but a lack of understanding.

The market never targets anyone; it just coldly punishes those who act emotionally. True experts have long understood: instead of doubting others for cheating, it's better to ask yourself first —

Is this operation driven by strategy or by adrenaline?