I am new to C.A.T., its more sophisticated then Quatloo trader I used before.
When I see each day another user selling his C.A.T. and having by myself only lost so far, although gaining pages over pages, then I wonder if somebody found the trick to make a living of it.
I use only the minimum to learn. Recently I tried to use 0.001 as initial trade in either direction, and if it got a gain, I added a new order with 0.01 as trade, deleting the old 0.001. And got -12% gain, ...
I want to have success. I want to learn, but it seems there is no guidance, just try, ... oh that did not work, ...try that, ....
Nobody can make a living out of trading coins (for now at least), unless he has
a lot of money to invest.
Take small steps.
I find my new pair by:
1. update the Markets list
2. click on %Diff to sort it from best to less
3. look at the right two columns Sell Trades 24H / Buy Trades 24H. Check which in the top list have about 100 / 100. If it has 150/30 it is for me clearly not a value to get trades frequently
4. from all candidates, I check which Volume (BTC is the highest) and choose now 3 to 4 coins.
At first I tried that and I had losses too. I found out that coins do not have steady volume or price, on any exchange. There are only specific coins (I call them "safe" coins) that have a big volume (so you can have a lot of small or a little bigger trades) and keep their value in general. You must study each coin you are thinking to trade before you actually put a serious amount to buy it and start trading it.
Before I also checked that the High / Low is at least 100, but you(?) said I can also take 1 Satoshi differences.
Then I tweaked the Ping Pong parameters:
1. Sell All if % Within Ref Price is < 10 (or 5%)
2. Run For 500 Min. And Return to BTC
3. Merge Equal Orders/Trades into a New One
Click [Update Ping-Pong Parameters]
Go back to Order Creators:
1. Click on [Check Status & Suggest Prices]
2. Lower box Type: Click on Sell and Buy once each to get data down.
3. Depending if the suggested values of Sell matches my amount of coins and gives me more than 0.001 I start with Type: Sell, otherwise with Buy
4. Click [Add Ping Request]
5. Cliick [Create Orders]
6. Click {Ping Creation Preview]
You need to learn before putting your money in danger. I would suggest the following:
1. Choose
ONE steady pair (i.e. Doge/BTC, LTC/BTC, LTC/XMR etc). Those pairs have big volumes and somewhat "steady" value, meaning they don't get from 100k to 1k satoshi within an hour.
2. Open the market tab, click on the [Check Status & Suggest Prices] button to get an idea of the current prices and percentage of difference. Proceed further ONLY if you can get a gain.
3. Click on [PingPong Parameters], go to [Advanced] tab and untick (disable) the [Try to stay alone on top Orders Book]. This option is great until a second bot appears in the same market, then it can lead to a disaster, bots fighting each other and destroying the gain margin. Also, in markets that have one satoshi difference, it can lead the bot to buy higher (the
ask price) and then it will have to sell even higher to get a gain. I use this option extremely rarely.
4.
Leave everything else at default. You will start using all other options once you
need them and understand how they work. This will take time. Default options work just fine, all others are needed on specific occasions.
5. Go back to Order Creator, click again on the [Check Status & Suggest Prices] button, to make sure things have not changed a lot within the few minutes you were making adjustments. If you are satisfied with what you see, put a SMALL amount to buy or sell (or both) and start trading.
6. Give it time. 500 minutes are not enough, in my humble opinion. I use CAT on 6 machines now, trading 24/7 and I only use this option to trade
new coins, to avoid a loss.
7. Since you are using Poloniex, click on [Orders] ==> [My trade history and analysis] and check your trades. Click on the pair you are trading with CAT to see the analysis. Poloniex tells you exactly how many coins you traded in a specific time frame, the average buy/sell prices and the gain (or loss) you had.
Then I watch the Logs / Pool Orders & Trades and General Gains, getting happy each time a positve Gain comes up, what most likely is soon vanished, when I look at My Balance and see, I have now less again.
I noticed that partially the lower My Balance comes from open orders, which are not displayed at Poloniex Exchange. If you go to Pool, Orders & Trades and click on a coin and then right mouse you can delete that position, a few seconds later you can Load Balances at My Balances and you got more again, ...
Try doing what I told you above for starters. And have common sense, use small amounts until you are capable to make a profit.
Is there anything I can improve my procedure?
Yes: spend time working with CAT. It will help you learn, I learned a lot from it as well. And at the occasions I have losses, I know it is my fault for misconfiguring the bot - OR- making a bad decision on the coin I tried to trade.
I am making the (good or bad) decisions, not CAT.