Secondary Market Retail Investors' True Mindset: Emotions Are Fighting Each Other

Retail investors trading stocks, to put it simply, are caught between greed, fear, luck, following the crowd, and fear of losing money, constantly flipping back and forth, relying entirely on emotions, with no real thinking involved.

1. When prices are rising: Greed clouds judgment, desperately chasing for fear of missing out

- Wanting to make more after a small profit, only satisfied after eating the last piece of meat
​
- Panicking when others are making money, chasing directly regardless of high prices, even daring to leverage heavily
​
- Fooling themselves: This time is different, only rising, no falling, can't possibly lose
​
2. When prices are falling: Holding on stubbornly, waiting to break even, but ending up cutting losses at the lowest point

- Unable to hold onto small profits, and when losing money, stubbornly refusing to cut losses
​
- Clinging to the purchase price, adding positions as prices fall, betting on a quick rebound
​
- Completely losing composure at the bottom, painfully cutting losses, only to see prices rise immediately after selling
​
3. Holding or being out of the market is uncomfortable: Constant anxiety, itchy hands leading to reckless operations

- Afraid of falling when holding positions, afraid of rising when out of the market, staring at the screen all day
​
- Feeling uneasy without trading, frequently buying and selling blindly, making more losses the more they operate
​
4. All decisions are wrong: Full of misconceptions

- Listening to news, following the crowd to buy stocks, never doing research or judgment oneself
​
- Only paying attention to good news, ignoring bad news, fooling oneself
​
- Selling winning stocks quickly, holding onto losing ones stubbornly, always earning small profits and losing big
​
- Analyzing perfectly after the fact, but making mistakes in actual operations
​
5. The eternal losing cycle of retail investors

Not daring to buy at low points → chasing high after a rise → leveraging heavily at high points → holding on stubbornly after a fall, adding positions → panicking and selling after a deep drop → cutting losses at the bottom and leaving → regretting and rushing in after a rebound
​
6. The mindset of mature traders

- Only looking at probabilities, following rules, not gambling for quick riches
​
- Proactively setting stop-losses, treating reasonable losses as normal trading costs
​
- Not guessing rise or fall blindly, executing only according to their own trading rules
​
- Not following the crowd's emotions, instead operating in the opposite direction
​
Summary

Most people treat the secondary market as a casino for overnight riches, making money by luck and losing by skill; only a few see it as a business based on rules and discipline, earning steadily through a systematic approach. $ETH