Recently, I experienced a trading cycle with LIGHT and RIVER in the contract market, and I want to organize the entire process and lessons learned.

**LIGHT's Long-Short Dilemma**

LIGHT started at 1U. I opened a short position of 3000U at the 1U price level. Around 8 a.m., when the price rose to 1.64U, I stopped out, including funding fees, with a total loss of about 2000U. Later, I realized that at 6 a.m., LIGHT briefly dipped below 1U. If I had set a breakeven stop loss in advance, I could have avoided this loss. But this also highlights a problem—excessive stop-loss protection often causes you to miss subsequent opportunities.

After stopping out, I immediately reversed to a long position. I entered a 4000U long at around 1.69U (tried lower prices in between but got shaken out), and eventually took profit at 2.13U. Later, when LIGHT retraced to 1.9U, I bottom-fished with 3000U, gradually increasing to 4000U, and held the position until the evening.

At this point, unrealized profit was about 400U, but suddenly, there was an unrealized loss of 700U—turns out, the contract side plummeted. I checked the spot market for comparison and found that the RIVER spot price hadn’t changed, which was an important signal. To be safe, I stopped out again, incurring a loss of about 900U.

**RIVER’s Precise Judgment**

After setting a stop-loss around 1.6U, RIVER stabilized for a few minutes, and the spot even showed a slight increase. I misjudged it as another false breakout, entered again, and within three minutes, I was again floating a loss of over 700U. This time, I confirmed it was a genuine distribution signal and decisively closed the position to cut losses.

I then reversed to a short position of 4000U, entering at around 1.3U. After confirming the decline, I added 1000U near 1U, totaling a 5000U short position. RIVER finally dropped to about 0.6U before I closed all positions, earning about 2200U profit.

**Pattern of Whale Coins Distributing**

The recent rise of LIGHT again confirmed a pattern: as a whale coin, it peaked at 2.5U. Although the increase was about 8 times, it never broke through the previous high. During the entire rally, there were multiple false breakouts designed to trap shorts. Such coins offer very limited short opportunities—only during the final distribution wave is there a real crash, which lasts about 10 minutes. Missing this 10-minute window leaves little chance for shorting.

During the upward phase, the coin’s momentum is too strong, easily creating false breakouts. Long positions can only be taken for short-term trades, with the risk of false breakouts and distribution. Shorting requires sufficient margin, and the previous high must be used as a stop-loss level.

**Summary**

The key lesson from this trading cycle is: during the rise of whale coins, going long with a stop-loss will inevitably lead to losses; only short-term quick entries and exits are viable. Shorting requires patience—once clear signals appear (such as divergence between spot and contract prices, or price stabilization followed by decline), you should dare to hold a large position and set reasonable stop-losses. The price difference between the contract and spot markets often signals distribution and is an important reference for judging genuine signals.