Chapter 3【Middle Part】: The Bewildered Right Hand and the Resolve to Create My Own Work

IV. The Market Chaos Indicator Announcement and the Repeated Short Button Press

Mid-February 2021, Thursday night.

The winter air, cold to the core, fogged the study window with a white mist. On the desk monitor, a one-minute chart of USD/JPY was displayed.

The moment major American economic indicators were released, the candlesticks leaped as if alive, with near-vertical bullish candles erupting across the screen.

“It rose…! There’s too much short-term overheating here. There should be a thick resistance wall technically. A skyrocketing market always pulls back! I’ll take a little profit and then exit quickly!”

I placed my finger on the left mouse button and slammed in a market-order short (sell). This was the beginning of all my nightmares.

Right after entering, the price dipped a few pips for a moment. “See, I was right after all!” Watching the tiny unrealized gains sent a surge of strong dopamine through my brain. “Just take another 5 pips, just as I predicted!”

But in the next moment, a further surge from a big investor came in, and the market left my short position behind as it started rising like a rocket again.

“What…!? Is it still rising!?”

Unrealized losses instantly swelled to minus 300,000 and then minus 500,000 yen. Normally I should have cut losses mechanically at a predetermined stop. But the demon whispers of past blowups completely paralyzed my rationality.

“Such an abnormal rise can’t last. If I increase shorts at even higher levels, my average entry price will rise, and with a slight pullback I can escape with a big profit…!”

Click, click, click.

I continued clicking the mouse as if I had lost my mind. 0.1 lots, 0.2 lots, 0.5 lots… I crazily raised the lot size and piled on reverse-position averaging. The box on the bottom-right of the screen showed a lineup of realized losses in the red, swelling.

V. The Demonic 860,000 Yen Loss Cut

One o’clock in the late night. The market did not reverse; it accelerated the uptrend’s momentum.

[Unrealized P/L: -520,000 yen]

Every time I looked at the numbers, my stomach felt like it was wrung out like a towel. Breathing became shallow, and my fingertips grew as cold as ice.

“Come back… Please, come back…!”

I clenched both hands and started praying toward the screen. Technical analysis, daily environment recognition, and risk-management rules—everything dissolved. It was just a pathetic gambler praying against the market.

After two o’clock in the morning. An inorganic email notification from my securities company about “maintenance margin decline” began flashing on my smartphone screen one after another.

To maintain my account balance, I attempted to perform a margin top-up (additional margin) with trembling hands. But at that moment, the market delivered a final midnight surge that became the fatal blow.

Beep, beep, beep—.

From the speakers, a grating succession of settlement noises roared. The maintenance margin fell below the liquidation line, and the system mercilessly closed out my positions from the top down.

When the screen regained its quiet, the number at the bottom of the trading history was.

[Realized loss: -864,500 yen]

“……ah”

I couldn’t even utter a word. 860,000 yen. In just a few hours of rampage, the salary and savings I had earned for months as a company employee disappeared into the market’s waste in an instant.

I collapsed from the chair, remaining on my knees on the floor as dawn began to break, staring blankly ahead.

For months afterward, it was days of utter silence. In the mornings, my face in the mirror looked numb; even when I smiled at clients, a sense of regret churned in the back of my mind. At night I couldn’t sleep, and whenever I saw my wife and children’s sleeping faces, a fierce self-loathing gnawed at me: “What am I doing… I should be protecting my family’s future, yet I’ve wasted money with my foolish desires.”

VI. The Night I Opened a Notebook — Realizing the True Purpose —

Since that day, I drifted through despair, going to work mechanically for months. Not even work felt possible; there were days I faked illness to take off. Then, at home, I found an old notebook on the living room table and opened it.

There were study notes from the past and rough scribbles from the early days I began facing the market.
As I turned the pages, I was struck by a realization.

“Why was I trying to make money in the market in the first place…?”

Was it for my own pleasure? To boast to others about becoming a “millionaire”? No. It wasn’t.

I worked hard, shared a modest life with my family, and didn’t want money to force my children to give up their future choices or schooling. Regardless of years ahead, I wanted to carefully cultivate and protect a solid “foundation” for my family to live securely.

Yet I chased short-term profits, driven by emotion, and repeated reckless trades that endangered my family’s future.

“…I’m such an idiot,”

Tears welled up, dampening the notebook pages. A deep sense of shame in my folly and remorse toward my family filled my chest.

In that instant, something inside me made a sharp crack, and then rebuilt anew.

Gambling for huge gains ended. The sweet illusion of instant fortune would be burned away together with that 860,000 yen.

What matters is not momentum or luck. “Even years ahead, I must perfectly calculate my children's tuition and family living expenses, and nurture and grow assets under a rock-solid risk-management system that won’t crack when storms come,” like farming a field to grow crops.

Trading with emotion leads to losses. Then I would program and build, with my own hands, an absolute defense system that can withstand any historical shock and survive any market.

I wiped my tears and boldly wrote on a new notebook page.

“Emotion → Absolute Exclusion”

“Not the Holy Grail of instant riches. Build an impregnable fortress to safeguard my family’s future.”

The awakening to an independent, solitary, yet certain self-made plan to protect my family’s future began here.