Ernst Journal 🦇🔊

#TOTAL3 (September 13, 2025) Clean breakout. Enjoy the show.

It’s time to revisit the low caps I shared in this Journal earlier and analyze how they performed and overall profit/loss and what this means for risk management. On May 13, 2025, we entered 7 low-cap trades. Let's the case study, let's simulate it with: $1000 per trade $500 per trade for high-risk gambles ➡️ Total invested funds: $6,000 📊 Trade Outcomes $FRAGMA Entry: $750K mc → Top: $950K (+26.7%) → Current: $30K (-96%) $MERCH Entry: $600K mc → Top: $1.1M (+83.3%) → Current: $400K (-33.3%) $OPTR Entry: $650K mc → Top: $2.3M (+253.9%) → Current: $530K (-18.5%) $CTRL Entry: $600K mc → Top: $1.7M (+183.3%) → Current: $120K (-80%) $PUR (high risk) Entry: $240K mc → Current: $30K (-87.5%) $WHAI (high risk) Entry: $250K mc → Top: $530K (+112%) → Current: $340K (+36%) $NODL (high risk) Entry: $80K mc → Top: $370K (+362.5%) → Current: $15K (-81.3%) Now let's back test with 2 Risk Management flows. 🛡 Risk Management Models Rule 1: Conservative Take profit: 50% at 2x, another 50% at 3x, etc. Stop loss: exit if price falls 3x under entry. Rule 2: Degen Take profit only at 5x (30% off). No stop loss. 📈 Results Conservative strategy: $6,256.67 🔼 Degen strategy: $2,558.30 🔽 Best (Conservative): $OPTR → $2,500 Worst (Conservative): $FRAGMA → $0 Best (Degen): $OPTR → $815.38 Worst (Degen): $FRAGMA → $40 Conclusion (ChatGPT) With $6,000 invested, the Conservative strategy not only protected capital but also grew the portfolio slightly. The Degen strategy cut the portfolio by more than half, since most trades never reached 5x. Taking profits step by step is what kept the Conservative approach alive, while “no stop loss + only big targets” left the Degen portfolio exposed to heavy drawdowns. $OPTR was the big winner in both cases, while $FRAGMA turned into the worst performer. _____________________________ P.S. All of these trades were DeFi (Web3) low caps. Many people believe you can just hold them long-term and eventually win. But the reality shows the opposite: 1. If you simply held, most trades ended at -80% to -95% losses. 2. Without active risk management and profit-taking, you would have ended up with almost nothing. 3. In this environment, “holding” = bleeding, while timing your exits is the only way to preserve and grow capital. Another reminder that every token out there is just your way to grow your capital in $ or ETH/BTC value. Do not marry with tokens, since each and that token will likely die sooner or later. As you can clearly see, without the risk management, doesn't matter how good is your technical or fundamental analysis, you are likely going to lose your portfolio. I will treat #DeFi tokens only as a quick casino gamble from now onwards, mainly focusing on CEX plays.

Our trade with $WFLI hit the Stop Loss. Happens. Onto the next.

Pre-pump / pre-euphoria phase. Eventually it's going to happen.

$TON scalp setup (low leverage) Entry - $3.2 DCA - $3 Stop Loss - $2.6 Take Profit - $5.5 nfa

If everything goes well, tomorrow could see a full breakout after the CPI data. If we fail to break out tomorrow, the pump will likely be delayed until late September. It really doesn’t matter when — what matters is where you take your profits. I wrote my targets here, since I do not want greed to control my decision-making.

$WLFI scalp setup (low leverage) Entry - $0.2085 Stop Loss - $0.19 TP - $0.265 Risk per Trade - not higher than 1% of your portfolio size. nfa.

#TOTAL3 update (September 10, 2025) Another retest of the $1.10T resistance zone (4 rejections so far). A breakout here would finally open the road to new highs.

$SUI conservative targets TP1 - $5.5 / TP2 - $6.4

Our active trades (September 8, 2025): (published) ENA TAO VIRTUAL PEPE BANANA JUP LTC Other trades that have been shared in DeFi Travelers chat and still live: SUI, CRV, UNI, Fartcoin, REZ

#OTHERS_D 1D update (September 7, 2025) A bit of a zoomed-in picture. The string is getting more and more compressed.

$BANANA update (1D) My plan remains the same. TP zone - $40 The last time it was in such oversold conditions was on June 24, 2025. Higher lows and consolidation mode continue. Adoption and revenue are still there.

Each first week of September is usually historically red for SPX (S&P500), so let's see if it's going to repeat in 2025 as well or no. And as everyone knows, crypto is just an echo bubble of the adult markets like stocks/derivatives/metals, and whatever happens there, reflects here.

BTC 1D - Buy signal (Cipher A indicator) Also, the last time BTC was this oversold was in March 2025.

#OTHERS_D 1W Others Dominance chart (excluding BTC, ETH, and stables). This chart represents the strength of altcoins (“others”) compared to the combined capitalization of BTC + ETH + stablecoins. Altcoin dominance has been in a downtrend since March 2024. According to this chart, we may have already found the bottom and are currently attempting a bounce. (It could happen instantly, or after a few failed attempts.) If we get a relief rally later this year and OTHERS.D bounces toward the 11–12% range, that would be another strong reason to take profits.

Crypto&Fear - August 30. 2025 Fear - 40. Beautiful.

US versus Venezuela

Another shakeout. Survive #5

$JUP 1D Brilliant R/R, higher lows, decreased volatility. My favorite chart structure. SL -$0.4 TP1 - $0.8 TP2 - $1 https://dropstab.com/coins/jupiter-station