[Bitget VIP User Story] Trader Steve: From U.S. Stocks to On-Chain Markets, When Knowing Alone Isn't Enough

As trading expands from traditional finance into on-chain markets, the way traders find and act on opportunities is changing too. For Steve, moving from China's stock market and U.S. stocks to on-chain assets has been more than a shift in what he trades. It has been a process of finding new ways to read and respond to the market.

Today, we speak with Bitget VIP Trader Steve, a short-term trader who primarily trades around news and market-moving events. After taking a significant loss on one trade, he found himself thinking about a different side of trading: Why is knowing what to do often so different from actually doing it?

01 From U.S. Stocks to On-Chain Markets: Looking for New Opportunities

Steve’s trading journey has taken several turns.

He started out trading China's stock market before moving into U.S. equities around 2020, primarily through IBKR.

Around June this year, as the trading environment for mainland Chinese investors in traditional markets such as Hong Kong stocks evolved, Steve began looking for more direct ways to participate in the market. Around the same time, on-chain markets caught his attention.

One of the biggest differences he found was the freedom from traditional market hours. On-chain markets operate 24/7. When a major event happens outside conventional trading hours, the market does not have to wait until the next morning to react.

For Steve, who looks for opportunities through information and market-moving events, that creates a very different trading environment. Once new information emerges, he can watch the market react in real time and decide whether the move presents an opportunity.

Trading has since become his main focus. He spends around ten hours a day following the markets and has built a regular information network that includes overseas sources and small groups of friends.

“I mainly do short-term, news-driven trading,” Steve says when describing his approach.

02 A Memory-Chip Rally Put His Market Read to the Test

For Steve, not every piece of information is worth trading.

When something happens, his first question is whether it can actually move the market — and whether the potential impact points clearly enough in one direction. Only when the information has real trading value and the market begins to move in line with his expectations does he consider entering a position.

A memory-chip rally in June was a good example.

Semiconductors and memory-related assets were already one of the areas Steve was watching closely this year. As new information emerged and the market began to react, he tracked the move and assessed whether price action was developing in the direction he expected.

Once he had more confidence in the direction, he chose to trade the move through futures, typically keeping leverage around 3–5x.

This is what Steve means by “news-driven” trading. But the news itself is never the trade. What matters is the direction it points the market in.

Looking back at his own trading performance, Steve puts the source of his gains quite simply:

“Most of the time, I use the news flow to gauge where the market is headed.”

03 “I Know the Right Answer, but Knowing Alone Isn't Enough”

If the memory-chip rally reinforced Steve’s confidence in his ability to read market direction, a major loss in July forced him to take a closer look at himself.

The trade took place on another exchange. After the position moved against him, he did not exit when he should have. Instead, he held on until the loss became too difficult to bear, eventually having no choice but to cut the position.

Looking back, Steve knew exactly what he should have done: once the market was no longer moving in line with his thesis, he should have exited the trade. But when faced with a loss that had already happened, there was a difficult gap between knowing the rule and actually following it.

This is a familiar form of loss aversion in trading, accepting a loss that has already happened can be harder than recognizing that the trade has gone wrong.

Steve describes the mistake very directly:

“The easiest mistake is holding on when the market is no longer going your way. The rule is simple: cut the trade. But actually doing it is much harder psychologically.”

The experience made Steve rethink where his profits and losses really came from.

He realized that his gains mostly came from getting the direction right, while many of his losses came from his own irrational decisions, especially holding on to losing trades.

In other words, trading performance is not just about being right about the market. It is also about what you do once the market proves you wrong: whether you can accept the outcome and act according to the rules you already know.

“I know the right answer, but knowing alone isn't enough.”

That may be closer to Steve’s current understanding of trading than any particular strategy or technical setup.

04 When Trading Becomes Routine, the Details Start to Matter

As trading became part of his daily routine, Steve’s expectations for a trading platform also became increasingly specific.

He prefers trading futures, with liquidity being one of the key factors behind that preference. When new information emerges, he needs to assess it quickly. Once he decides to act, he needs to be able to execute that decision efficiently.

From his experience, Steve finds Bitget’s liquidity helpful in turning a market view into an actual trade, allowing him to execute more smoothly when opportunities arise.

For a short-term trader like Steve, information itself is also part of the trading process. The weekly industry updates, market insights, and strategy content available through VIP provide another reference point when he is assessing market direction.

Beyond that, many of the things he cares about may seem small, but they directly affect the trading experience.

For example, he would like to see OI (Open Interest) directly on mobile, and hopes asset-name changes can be reflected more quickly across the platform.

His feedback is straightforward: he values the trading experience he has today, while continuing to look for the small details that could make it even more practical for active traders.

05 Turning Knowledge Into Action

After several years of trading and a few hard lessons along the way, Steve’s understanding of trading has gradually shifted from simply reading the market to understanding himself.

Loss aversion is not just a concept from a textbook. It can directly shape a trader’s decisions. You can know that it is time to cut the position. Yet when you are staring at a real loss, it can still be difficult to keep emotions from taking over.

For Steve, the next step may not be finding a more complicated trading strategy. It may be learning, again and again, to step back from the PL in front of him, take a more objective view of each decision, and turn what he knows into what he actually does.

This article is based on an interview with trader Steve. The views expressed are those of the interviewee and do not constitute investment advice. Futures trading involves significant risk and may result in the loss of your entire principal. Please make trading decisions based on your own risk tolerance.