There is a widely respected golden rule circulating in the crypto trading community—"Small stop-loss, high take-profit,"—many newcomers regard it as the golden rule of risk management.

However, reality is much more complex. These four words may sound professional, but at their core, they are account killers, like an invisible dull knife slowly grinding down your principal and your mindset.

The root of the problem lies here: small stop-losses do aim to control risk, but the 1%-2% intraday volatility in the crypto market is as common as eating. Setting a stop-loss at this "emotional price level" is equivalent to entrusting the fate of your holdings to market noise, and a single rebound can wipe you out. Even more ruthless, smart big funds treat these dense stop-loss orders as liquidity black holes, and small stop-loss positions are most easily "harvested" precisely.

As for high take-profit? That’s an even more attractive trap. The higher the take-profit, the lower the success rate—waiting for a 10%, 20% big move is essentially betting on a miracle. But what does daily reality look like? Being repeatedly sliced by 2%-3% losses every day, and over a whole month, you rarely get a chance to hit a take-profit. Add to that a heavy position size, and your account won’t blow up overnight, but it will be slowly drained over time like a frog boiling in warm water.

The truly sustainable trading mindset is actually the opposite: stop-losses don’t have to be small, the key is to place them at technically supported levels; take-profits don’t have to be greedy, choosing zones that can be repeatedly achieved is the real key. The essence of trading is never about one big turnaround, but about establishing a stable odds advantage.

As long as you remain obsessed with small stop-losses to chase high take-profits, you will inevitably fall into a cycle of self-deception and operational distortion, ultimately trapped in a parameter system destined for losses. Stability is the only secret to long-term survival.