@saberu to be honest i have almost the same story. lost gigantic with rox, trust, nav and more. all bought at top prices lol.
Follow the tips I made above which are all things I learned through experience but likely common sense to anyone with real trading skills. Also a tip I got from a trader is always buy in small amounts over a long period of time but you can sell all at once if it's during a pump and you need to get out just break the order into parts. Exception to this is if there's a big news event like anon launch or even launch dates then you can buy at once. Set your buy orders under the top buy walls and never buy at market price. Though what I would do in future is if it's just a launch date hence a lot of risk you can just buy for an hour or two and ride the hype wave for a quick few percent.
I think the key to trading like a pro is don't be a bagholder, losing all that money has made me think in terms of what I can earn rather than missed oppurtunities. If you start thinking about missed oppurtunities and wanting to be in 'just incase' of a pump then that is bagholder mentality and the road to broke. I am going to code up a script which monitors volume over short periods like 1 hour, 6 hours, 15 and 5 minutes etc. I have noticed that volume up means price is going up and volume down usually means price down slowly or quickly. I think a lot of the traders use such scripts and if they see volume increasing over x period they buy in for a short period this way they can trade a whole bunch of different coins without having to 'live' in the coin threads like us bagholders do. It's a whole different world for expert traders, I think apart from occasionally refreshing a coin thread's page during a pump and reading the OP before they buy they usually don't even know much about the coin till they buy it. I am going to use these strategies in future and confident I can slowly increase my holdings like 20-50% a month instead of bagholding a coin and hoping it doubles or triples in a month.
I think another factor is the amount you invest, the smart traders are investing large amounts like $10-20k or more hence pretty happy with a 5% profit. Whereas mere mortals like us might start with $4-5k and get lucky in the beginning like I did with XC then when we get to bigger amounts like $20-30k we are still in the 'I am going to 10x my money again' mindset and baghold the next 'good thing' which 95% of the time is hyp or a scam on this forum. It's really difficult to make the kind of profit that alt coins can make in the real world so better to be super cautious than lose everything.
Another tip I would have is don't take trading advice from people on here or IRC. A guy in IRC told me to buy back ConcealCoin after I had just sold at 4.2k, saying it is about to explode upwards and that he was a pro and I should listen, naively I followed his advice buying back at 4.5k and then it instantly dumped. I slowly came to the realisation that this punk was just tricking me into putting up a big buy wall so he could dump all his coins on me. As at the time I knew there was a fake buy wall holding it up and it was going to drop but having lost a lot of BTC on earlier trades I decided to take the advice of this 'trader'. At least half or more of the people on this forum will screw you over for a BTC if they are in a tight spot and need someone to get them out which is why fudding and hyping exist. 99% of fudders have sold the coin and trying to buy back lower to make a small profit during a bear market, and most hypers are just either trying to get out druing a pump or deluded bagholders holding forever.
