Have you ever experienced this kind of helplessness? Making seven or eight profitable trades, only to suffer a huge loss and lose everything in one shot. Feeling like the market is about to surge, you go all in, only to get trapped and wiped out. You finally catch a wave of market momentum, but you run away at the start of the move.

It's not bad luck; ultimately, it's because you didn't understand the math.

I've been in trading communities for many years and discovered a pattern: the difference between profitable traders and retail traders who get wiped out isn't how advanced their technical analysis is, but their understanding of some basic mathematical logic. Today, I want to break down three mathematical truths that professional traders have long mastered, but most people are still blindly guessing.

**First Truth: High Win Rate Is a Huge Trap**

This is the easiest pitfall to fall into. Retail traders believe that the higher the win rate, the better—70%, 80%, even some boast about a 90% win rate. But real-world cases tell a different story.

There’s a trader with a 92% win rate, sounding invincible, right? Yet, he blew up his account. Why? Because his logic was to make small profits—only 1% to 2% per trade. But when a big market move comes, a single loss can be 25%. All those 100 correct trades are meaningless.

What does the data say? In the professional trading circles I’ve studied, the highest win rates are around 50% to 60%, but these traders have a profit-to-loss ratio of over 1.5:1. And what’s the result? They earn far more over a year than those obsessing over a high win rate.

From another perspective, if you can accept losing more trades but making more on each correct trade, your long-term returns will be more stable. This isn’t mysticism; it’s pure mathematics.

What should you do now? Pull up your last 30 trades and review them. If your win rate exceeds 70%, immediately check your profit per trade. You might be making small profits but losing big on the other side. The solution isn’t to increase your win rate but to expand your profit margins and reduce your losses.

**Second Truth: Position Size Is the Key to Survival**

This is the most critical point. How many people blow up their accounts at the moment they think, "This trade feels very safe, I’ll go all in"? I’ve heard countless stories like this.

But how should you calculate your position size correctly? There’s a very simple formula:

Maximum loss per trade = Your total account balance × your risk coefficient

For example, if you have 10,000 USDT in your account and set your risk coefficient at 2% (which most professional traders choose), then the maximum loss per trade is 200 USDT.

Next, the key point: suppose Bitcoin is bullish now, and you set your stop-loss at a 1,000-dollar decline. How many units should you trade? Just reverse the calculation: 200 dollars ÷ 1,000 dollars stop-loss distance = 0.2 Bitcoin. That’s your position size.

Where do most retail traders go wrong? They do the opposite: decide to buy 0.5 Bitcoin first, then find a stop-loss close to the current price. This way, risk is not properly controlled.

Your risk coefficient doesn’t have to be exactly 2%. Conservative traders can lower it to 1%, while aggressive traders might go up to 3%. The key is to have this awareness: the maximum loss of each trade must be calculated precisely in advance.

**Third Truth: Holding Time and Returns Are Inversely Related—Try It and See**

This might challenge your assumptions. Many believe in holding long-term, but in reality, they end up losing profits and getting shaken out repeatedly.

For volatile assets like Bitcoin, professional traders usually follow a pattern: either very short-term trading—grasping a few hours of price swings—or medium-term, holding for three to five days. The most awkward zone is the middle ground—holding for three to five hours, where your stop-loss must be very tight (since you haven’t reached your target price), but even a slight market pullback can trigger your stop, leading to being shaken out.

Does data support this view? Based on the trading community data I’ve seen, ultra-short-term traders (holding minutes to hours) and medium-term traders (holding days) generally achieve higher annual returns than those who "want to hold long-term but keep changing their minds."

So, you need to set a rule for yourself: before entering a trade, decide what type of trade it is. Do you want to profit from today’s volatility? Or from this week’s trend? Once decided, stick to that time frame. Don’t enter a trade and then panic and exit when the market moves against you—that’s usually a sign you’re being shaken out.

In summary: increasing profits isn’t about raising your win rate; it’s about managing your risk-reward ratio. Position sizing isn’t based on feelings but on mathematical calculations. Holding time isn’t based on imagination but on a plan you make before entering. These three mathematical truths may seem incredibly simple, but those who truly master them are already making a fortune in the trading market.