Top trader Eugene: $60 million long on SOL, did not stop loss in time
ChainCatcher message, top trader Eugene Ng Ah Sio shares a recent trading summary. After perfectly going long on BTC from $102,000 to $107,000, I decided to transfer this profit into long positions on SOL and the SOL ecosystem. The entry point at that time offered a moderate risk-reward ratio (r/r), specifically: going long on SOL at $220, WIF at $2.75, and BONK at $0.037. This was based on SOL's strong performance on lower time frames (LTF) and the confidence gained from previous successful trades. When the BTC market began to turn at $108k, I was not pleased with the trading performance of some meme coins, so I decisively closed out the underperforming assets, accepting an acceptable loss (which was the right move). However, I did not close my SOL position; instead, I chose to increase my position from $20 million to $30 million. This led to the formation of the first mistake.Mistake 1: Not cutting losses in time:Typically, one of my strengths is the ability to exit positions promptly when they start to lose strength to avoid larger losses. However, this time, I chose not to cut losses when SOL dropped to $215, even though I believed the market would experience downward volatility around the FOMC meeting. My bias overwhelmed my logic, and the psychological excuse I used to comfort myself was that $200 was a key support level for SOL, and it was very close. I didn't want to be "liquidated" by the market for trying to catch a 5% move. When SOL dropped to the $200 support level, I further increased my position, raising it from $30 million to $45 million, reasoning that the risk-reward ratio at the high time frame (HTF) support was optimal. I didn't think this was a mistake, but it certainly made an already complicated situation more dangerous.Mistake 2: Ignoring stop-loss points:When SOL broke below $200, the clear action should have been to close the position as planned. However, I chose to hold on because the position size had become so large that if I closed it at that moment, it might trigger a waterfall drop in SOL's price to $190 and ruin the entire chart. At this point, I began to harbor "hopium," thinking, "maybe there will be a lower wick that breaks support and then recovers." This mindset was definitely a red flag, and I should have been particularly cautious. Moreover, after the price fell below $200, I leveraged my position in the $187 to $193 range, increasing my position size to nearly $60 million (with total account leverage reaching 1.2x). This was clearly a wrong move, but as you can see, the mistakes began to compound. Fortunately, a complete "black swan" event did not occur, and I was not punished more severely.What I did right:When my unrealized loss reached $7-8 million, I decided "enough is enough" and decisively cut my losses. I closed 70% of my position at $193, which allowed me to free up cash to re-enter at the final bottom, including ETH, ENA, PEPE, and WIF, almost catching the lowest point. Ultimately, the actual profit and loss (rPNL) of this trade was a loss of $6.2 million, approximately -10.2%. Since then, I have executed 13 trades, all profitable, essentially making up for this loss. I believe this is a great example of how a trade can go wrong from the start, and then mistakes can compound, potentially leading to a very bad situation, especially when the "sunk cost fallacy" takes over. Fortunately, I was able to break free from this mindset, which allowed me to trade calmly and accurately at the market bottom. This was my largest single position loss on this account, and I will remember this lesson for a long time.Merry Christmas, friends.
