For those who trade, sometimes you really need to pause and reflect: are those supposedly clever moves of yours actually effective?

Last November, I accidentally reviewed my account records and was shocked—the account I had been actively tinkering with had returns that were only 60% of another "hands-off" account. Unconvinced, I decided to run a controlled experiment.

The experiment was simple: two accounts, each with 5,000 invested. Starting December 1, both accounts opened positions at the same time, shorting a hundred different coins. Account A followed my "mature" strategy—buying more when bullish, cutting back when bearish, using both take-profit and stop-loss orders. Account B? After reducing its positions, it just sat there, untouched.

The result was a slap in the face.

Account A’s final returns were only 69% of Account B’s! Looking closer at the holdings, it got even more interesting: Account A did catch more high-return coins, but generally held smaller positions in them; for the losing coins, A had fewer losses but unfortunately heavier positions.

In other words, all those supposedly smart moves of mine were actually useless. I didn’t maximize my gains, and I ended up holding the worst positions too heavily.

Sometimes, the market will tell you in the simplest and most brutal way: less tinkering might actually be the real wisdom.