Many traders simply understand "defense" as setting stop-losses, but this is actually a big misconception. The true meaning of defense is to give yourself a chance to restart.

Looking at it from another perspective, if you have 1 million idle funds and want to open a store, how would you allocate it? Smart people definitely wouldn't put all 800,000 in at once. If the business doesn't go well, there's really no room to turn things around. Conversely, if you only invest 100,000, even if that amount is lost, you still hold 900,000 in chips, with countless possibilities to restart.

The logic of trading is exactly the same. Whether the stop-loss is set at 10 points or 1 point depends on technical judgment. But what is even more deadly is the **ability to survive**—this is the core of the defensive mechanism and what is often called the "circuit breaker" in trading circles.

My own strict rule is simple: if the daily loss exceeds 5%, trading is immediately halted. It's not that 5% is special; the key is that data shows when the principal loss reaches 15%, users are likely to continue losing until their account hits zero. This is a warning that must be remembered.

What to do after triggering the 5% circuit breaker? Not to give up, but to force yourself to stop for 3 days. Spend 3 to 5 hours each day reviewing and observing market trends. The progress made during this period is often the fastest—because you're fighting against the dopamine-driven impulses of trading, restraining the urge to quickly recover losses, truly practicing "letting go," and staying away from greed and anxiety.

Market makers' layouts are never about using indicators to precisely manipulate retail traders; what really widens the gap is the trader’s defensive level. Once you fall into traps like martingale averaging down, reversing positions against the trend, trading without stop-losses, or frequently moving stop-losses, the outcome is already predetermined.

The final competition in trading is never about who earns the most points, but about who loses the least and survives the longest.