I remember the words (thoughts) of Poptop (an authoritative Bitcointalk forum member in 2017): "Traders typically remain effective for no more than one market cycle. As soon as a new cycle begins, the trader dies. What remains is human." 🙋
I find his words very wise... Indeed, each new market cycle is a complete reversal of all trends in the cryptocurrency market. That is, a trader has learned something, gained experience and knowledge, but as time goes on, all their skills and experience not only become completely useless but also begin to work against them.
What is experience? It's effective and efficient behavior patterns... However, when the market changes, old patterns cease to work. Where a trader once made a profit, they will now suffer losses. A novice will be more effective than an experienced trader. That's the paradox...
That is a good way of understanding how the market is working. I like that sentence, he was apparently a smart person who really understood the market. If you really do make a lot of money during one cycle, it's really hard to get out of that cycle and see the bigger picture.
Like in the bull period, if you are making a lot of money, then when you go into bear market period, you are not going to be able to adjust easily and most people end up losing, whereas they should have realize the market has changed instead. This is not easy and it's very "human" to not understand this type of situation and think that what we are doing, like what we achieve, will stay forever and will not change, when in reality, change is all around us.