A trader's personal account of losing everything underscores a simple but brutal lesson: making money in a bull market is easy, keeping it is not.

• Big gains during rising markets can feel effortless, tricking traders into thinking they're skilled when they're just lucky.
• Once prices stop climbing in a straight line, those same traders often give back most or all of their profits.
• The real missing piece is risk management — controlling position size and losses — not picking the right trade.
• Even experienced traders can go broke by ignoring this, as happened in this case.

Outlook: Traders who don't adopt strict risk management are likely to repeat the same cycle of big wins followed by bigger losses.