I keep trying to catch the bottom in U.S. stocks and BTC—laughing all the way, only to realize there’s no end to the bottoms. This time, I bought too soon; the risks hadn’t gradually eased, but seeing prices hit new highs, I followed historical patterns and started buying at the slightest dip in the index. I’ve always maintained over 80% exposure in my U.S. stock portfolio, never dropping below 50%. This time, my account pulled back by about 10%. U.S. stocks and crypto are pretty similar—I primarily use a share-based and coin-based position strategy. After years of losing money, I’ve broken down bottom-fishing into four steps to ensure I always have capital to buy: 1. When it dips slightly, fully load your spot position using sell puts to accumulate. 2. If it drops further, add margin leverage—but keep total leverage under 1.5x. 3. When a crash hits and everyone starts screaming, shift some positions into long-dated options; options require low margin and typically offer 10x+ capital efficiency. 4. If it drops further, replace the underlying stock with a 2x leveraged ETF (I haven’t reached this step yet). This strategy still carries significant drawdowns—normally, just executing steps 1 and 2 is enough. Being too aggressive comes at a cost: in crypto, I’ve been liquidated at low leverage during the 10-11 drop; in stocks, adding leverage meant getting margin-called during a modest pullback—even when the risk clearly wasn’t that high.