How a High-Interest Currency Slammed Me with Reality (Part 2)

contents

The Lira… It Keeps Falling. And Falling.
Averaging Down: The Thing Called “Hope” (and Also a Trap)
Mental Damage Grows Faster Than Swap
The Moment I Finally Pulled the Plug
What I Learned from This Experience
Conclusion: I Had to Dream First to See Reality
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The Lira… It Keeps Falling. And Falling.

“If I just hold long-term and collect swap, I’ll win!”

That was my belief—right up until I watched TRY/JPY
slowly, but relentlessly drift downward in front of my eyes.

At first, I honestly didn’t care that much.

“It’s basically noise.”
“It’s probably just temporary.”

But this is where FX gets scary.

Even a move of a few yen can turn into
hundreds of thousands of yen in unrealized losses
when your position size is large.

The moment I opened my account and saw the numbers:

“Uh… wait.”
“This comes back… right?”

While repeating that to myself,
I began checking the chart again and again.

Averaging Down: The Thing Called “Hope” (and Also a Trap)

Every time the lira dropped, one thought popped into my head:

“This is a buying opportunity.”

Yes—averaging down.

At first, it actually worked.

A small bounce would shrink my losses, and I’d think:

“See? Totally fine.”

But averaging down in a falling market is really just:

Loading more cargo onto a sinking ship.

Before I realized it, most of my account balance was locked into lira.

“If I cut here, everything was for nothing.”
“Just a little longer…”

I had fully entered the psychological state of no return.

Mental Damage Grows Faster Than Swap

Every day, swap points came in.

Sure, that part felt nice.

But when I looked at things calmly,
those amounts were basically
rounding errors compared to the unrealized losses.

Every time I checked the chart, my stomach tightened.

I’d open the rate on my phone,
stare for a second,
then quietly close the screen.

“If this gets liquidated, it’s all over…”

Thoughts like that kept looping,
and sleepless nights became more frequent.

This was supposed to be investing—
yet it was
completely grinding down my mental health.

The Moment I Finally Pulled the Plug

In the end, no matter how long I waited, the lira kept falling.

I’d reached my limit searching for hope in the chart.

“I can’t take this anymore.”

That’s when I finally decided to cut the position.

When I saw the realized loss:

“…Yeah. Figures.”

Strangely, my mind felt a little lighter.

The profits earned from swap were meaningless
compared to the massive unrealized losses.

“Easy money with high-interest currencies.”
That dream shattered completely right there.

What I Learned from This Experience

High interest rates always exist for a reason (inflation, currency instability, etc.)
Swap strategies are inseparable from price movement risk
Averaging down, one wrong step away from disaster
FX should be done in a way that doesn’t destroy your mental health

Conclusion: I Had to Dream First to See Reality

I dreamed about the Turkish lira,
and reality hit me full force.

Honestly, at the time, it was brutal.

But because of that experience, I was able to shift my mindset:

“Slow and steady, long-term.”
“Strict risk management.”

If I had kept holding on to the lira back then,
I might not even be investing today.

So now I can say this:

That failure was an extremely expensive—
but absolutely necessary—tuition fee.

I’m not fluent in English, but I really wanted to share this story.
So I tried my best using translation tools to write this post.
If you find anything that sounds strange, unnatural, or offensive,
please let me know in the comments.
I’ll check it carefully, translate your feedback, and fix it.
Thank you for reading!