Reviewing the bull market & preparing in a bear market

June 23, 2022

This is an exercise I did last night which seemed to help me define my portfolio goals and areas for improvement from the last couple of years trading the crypto market. It felt important to look at what went well, what mistakes were made, and through the process of visualising all of this having a clear plan of what to be doing in the future. I’ve noticed that a lot of the influential figures in the space, everything from VCs, influencers, Twitter personalities all had very different experiences in the bull run and although their learnings may be relevant they’re all tailored to themselves. Of course, some of the core principles of risk management, conviction, research and so on are all fundamentally key for success in these markets - the difference between being told and actually understanding what applied directly to ourselves as traders/investors is a big difference. I feel like this is a valuable exercise if you haven’t done something similar already. By breaking down our own performance, learnings and goals we are able to take full control of the past and how we react to it in the future.

Some key areas I evaluated with regards to my own experience and some broad examples of what you can include in each section (make specific to you):Overall performance - Profit / Loss - Invested capital & realised gains Best overall plays / what worked well and what you did- Best trades - Best longer-term investments - What narratives or vehicles worked (NFTs, IDOs, Yield Farming, Memecoins etc) Biggest mistakes (overall and specific scenarios)- Poor risk management/profit-taking - FOMO - Lack of conviction- Overinvested Key learnings from the experience- Where are you strong - Where are you weak- What would you do again- What would you change Areas to focus on improving- Personal mindset - Work ethic - Areas to upskill (trading, macro, research & understanding etc)- Diversification What is the plan going forward?- How are you managing your capital - What is the plan in bearish conditions - What new skills are you going to learnThese are just guidelines and examples of things you can think on and review from your time so far in the crypto space - so change them to meet your needs. Be brutally honest in positives and negatives, but remain clear and positive on what you will do about it going forward. By writing down your experiences then you can more easily make sense of them and creating clear goals and a plan of action then it is the first step to realising it. Hope this helps anyone who may need it!