While buy low/sell high sounds good, the reality of markets is that while it can be done, it is usually only the smart money that manages to do it.

The reason why it feels like people panic buy at the highs is because they do. Humans are driven by emotion and the fear of missing out is more painful than the loss itself if you're flat. Dumb money buys when they shouldn't, then the smart money pushes it down and cleans up their stops when they're invariably triggered at the point they were not patient enough to wait to buy in the first place.

Check out this BTC/USD chart with the key psychological level of $1000 drawn in:

I've then marked the point where price broke through the all time highs. Do you remember the headlines when it broke that $1000? It was going to the moon back then. The herd just couldn't wait any longer and longed straight into the waiting sellers lurking above the panic buy level.

50% of your investment later and the pain way too much, those same smart sellers were waiting to soak up your pain at the other end. The eternal battle between the emotional dumb money and the support/demand based smart money. It's truly a beautiful thing to analyse!

Now look at the price action around each new high in this epic bull market. Can you pick the smart and dumb money coming in?