The correct way to earn more in a bearish market is firstly if you know or have confirmation that it will continue to go down, secondly if you have that confirmation then what you should do is go leveraged by at least x10, from then on it is what the trader determines, there is no other way.
That is the safest way for me to maximize profits, is there a risk? Of course, there is always a risk, but in the professional sense it is what you should do knowing that there is confirmation of a bearish market.
It is not that easy, we can't just find out if the market will go up or down and we can't be one hundred percent sure about it too and for a trader who is new they should never be advised to do trading and with high leverage as of 10x to make small profits with small downtrends by shorting the token.
This way is not reliable and can liquidate the person very quickly if market did not dumped but pumps even %5 to %10 that is possible so we should take with the worst case scenario and never do such high leverage trading and in the first place we should not do it at all.
In trading, or investing in general, there's no such thing as 100%. There's no such thing as certainties in the market, but only probabilities, and that's why we are learning how to read the market, so we know if the market is bullish or bearish for that day/week. As for your advice, it's good to start at x5 only with regards to leverage, and if you can use a demo account, that would be helpful as well.
Bearish market doesn't mean that it's all down, and down and down. There will be times where you can go to a long position, but if you're a swing trader, I would not suggest it though. Trading in general is very risky whether we are in a bullish market, or in a bearish market. Just remember how many times traders lost billions and billions of money just because of a single news. It can also happen during the bear market as well, so always, always put a stop-loss. Just an advice.
