Topic: Buy low/ sell high or buy and hold? (Read 529 times)

Just don't sell too quickly.

Buy and hold

Without a doubt...

I make somemore money continuously by buying down @ 500 usd and selling high.

I know before Mt Gox went all weird on us, my friend was making lots of money trading. Mt Gox is significantly higher priced then most other places and because of that it was easy to make money trading. Even with the fee's. Lately though if you held onto your bitcoins from about a week ago, you made out like a bandit  

You will make more money by selling high and buying low. But if you don't know what you are doing it's pure gambling. So don't.

How can anyone possibly give you an answer to that? You can make a fortune playing the markets, just as easily as you can lose it all, and nobody can tell you how much BTC will be worth in even a month's time. That's the gamble and only you can decide what to do. If you want to see how much you can make, invest 50% in daytrades and hold on to the other 50%.

Deciding when to buy and sell is not so easy. Try it with little money first, then decide if you want continue. Obviously when you look back you see how much you could make if you buy and sell at right moments, but it is not so easy to predict future 

I did some trading a while (before I sold them ). It's psychologically hard because your brain cannot relax, because if it takes a minute of you might lose money. So unless you are really strong mentally, I'd recommend you just buying and watch it rise!

Trading is one of the hardest professions on the planet.  Hard because there is never enough good data to make a decision on, and hard because it is psychologically very tough.  Your brain will tell you it's seen enough data, and it's time to buy or sell.

By your own admission, you ask 'will I make MORE money' ?   This contains the implicit assumption that you will make money with either of your two strategies. 

If you read the net, you will find endless people drawing technical charts telling you why the price will go up / down next.  I wouldn't trust them very far.  I wouldn't trust them.  Or your own eyes.

You will also find that those that have made money, shout louder than those who have lost it.  Hell, if you read the net, you will find enough stories about playing roulette to believe you can win.

My advice : Download as much data as you can, build some simple models and fit them.  In particular try to compute confidence intervals on your parameters.  Try to use as few parameters as possible . 2 or 3 max.   Consider any rule like 'don't buy on friday' a parameter.

Test your model.  Add in realistic transaction costs.  If your resulting profit-and-loss stream time series differs much from a random walk then you might be onto something.

Personally : I believe you can make money out of bitcoin.  But I wouldn't trade it.  Too damn expensive.

Will you make more money continuously buying low and selling high or just buying and riding the roller coaster up?