Feeling the Heat in Hong Kong
My Chinese subscribers have asked me at least twenty times in the last twenty hours whether the bull market is really coming. I flew to Hong Kong to take the temperature of the market in person, because you cannot feel the real mood just by staring at charts. After two days of conversations, I can tell you the energy is not fake. People are talking with that spark in their eyes again.
Last year was brutal. After the crash, many of us moved our trading app to the second page of the phone so we would not have to look at it. But over the last two weeks, the price has climbed back, and now you are scrolling at midnight, moving that app back to the first page. Your heart pounds a little. The people who used to post profit screenshots every day are poking their heads out again. The question is whether this is a real rebound or just another dead cat bounce.
Rule 1: Buy the Leaders, Not the Lottery Tickets
My first rule is friend advice, not investment advice. This cycle, do not chase the next 100x coin that someone is trying to sell you. Buy the leaders that have already been proven. Look at what institutions are doing. BlackRock's IBIT alone holds about 48.44 billion dollars in net assets. Smart money did not sprinkle capital across a hundred coins. They concentrated hard into a handful of leaders.
Here is how I suggest you allocate. Put more than 70 percent of your positions in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and maybe a few top projects on major chains like Solana, Uniswap, or BNB. Then you can use the remaining 30 percent to chase some upside and take real risk. Just do not let the risky stuff become the main part of your portfolio. Leaders move first, but picking the right asset is only half the battle. What decides whether you keep your profits is the emotional state you are in when you pull the trigger.
Rule 2: Slow Down When the Greed Index Screams
Right now the fear and greed index has already moved into the greed zone. The counterintuitive fact is that the higher the greed index goes, the easier it is for retail to buy the top. Everyone in your head is screaming to get on the train. Historically, every time this index punches above 70 and spikes even higher, the next one to two weeks see clearly bigger volatility and a lot of problems. It is a normal snapback after emotion builds up to a breaking point.
Before every buy, I run through three questions. First, does this project have real liquidity? Second, can I explain its narrative in one sentence? Third, if this position went to zero tomorrow, would I still be able to sleep tonight? If I cannot answer all three cleanly, I do not buy. Slowing down does not mean you miss the move. It means you are not the last person holding the bag.
Rule 3: Meme Coins Are Fireworks, Not Savings
There is one type of asset that gets ignored the most: meme coins. Yes, memes can 10x in a week. But you cannot treat them like money you are saving for retirement. It is more like gambling. Let me tell you what happened to me once. I made my first 30x on a meme. I thought it would go to 50x, so I did not take much profit along the way. A few days later, almost everything it had gained was gone. I rode the roller coaster all the way back to the starting point. The frustration of having touched the money and then watching it slip away was worse than the loss itself.
After that, I made a hard rule for high volatility stuff like meme coins or very small altcoins with low liquidity. When it hits 2x, you sell half and then place your stop loss at break even. That way the rest becomes a free position and you can let it ride. If you do this often, you will have some mooners that feel great. At least you keep your original capital and your head stays much calmer. Memes look amazing, but they are dangerous.
Rule 4: Follow the Institution-Grade Narratives
What is different this cycle? Three things are happening at the same time. First, Bitcoin spot ETFs pulled in 1.92 billion dollars in one week, the highest in the last ten months. The same Wall Street firms that used to call Bitcoin a scam are now launching ETFs and stacking spot. Second, this week the Fed is holding its annual meeting at Jackson Hole. The market is waiting for rate cut signals. Macro money and crypto money are colliding at the exact same moment.
Third, the focus is no longer the crypto circle shutting the door and pumping narratives among themselves. It is unchained finance now: real yield protocols and structural inflows of institutional-grade capital. I am not naming specific tokens because these narratives change fast. But Standard Chartered said this week that if the trend continues, Bitcoin could see 100k by the end of the year. You do not have to take that number as gospel, but institutions are genuinely betting in that direction. The main character this cycle is that money is actually moving on chain. Traditional finance is moving on chain. That is a fundamental difference from previous bull markets.
Rule 5: Take Profits Against Human Nature
The hardest part is your own position: when to act and when to take some chips off the table. Most people do the sequence backwards. They test with a small size early, then when the crowd flows in, they size up. The correct way is the opposite. To make it concrete, say you put in ten thousand dollars. When it goes to twenty thousand, sell two to two and a half thousand and lock that in. When it goes to forty or fifty thousand, sell another piece. You take profits along the way but keep the leftover for the long term.
You prioritize spot and stay away from high leverage. Leveraging a bull market is like that free cocktail you get at the casino. It feels great while you are drinking it, but the bill always comes the next day, and it is usually a lot more expensive than you thought. I have watched too many smart people take every dollar they made and hand it right back to the markets. The problem usually is not that they read the market wrong. Some are really good analysts. The problem is the timing of when they take their hands off the table.
The Real Test Is Emotional, Not Technical
If you only remember one sentence from this article, write this down. A bull market was never a machine that makes you money. It is an exam that trains you on when to take your hands off the table. That sentence may feel abstract at first, but all five rules exist to serve that one line. The biggest problem in a bull market is human emotions, not chart reading.
So what are you doing in this bull market? When I record this, Bitcoin is around 82k. Is it a turning point? Will it continue? I do not know for certain, and neither does anyone else. But if you follow these rules, you can survive the volatility and keep more of what you earn. That is what matters.