Probably we can just agree to disagree on this point about whether an investor (could do better or could have done better).. even though hypothetically, I do understand a certain amount of wait for a BIGGER dip idea that you seem to be proclaiming to be "better", but any person can end up buying BTC all the way down the downward trajectory of the BTC price for reasons that are based on his whole cashflow situation and ongoing uncertainty about when the bottom is in and how much more (if at all) the price might fall, or not, and in BTC still end up profitable as fuck and even more profitable than a variety of folks who had taken different strategies of trying to time the market and who may have ended up waiting too much and NOT buying and being too nervous..
I think every investor should optimize their strategy. That's all I'm talking about. Even simple rules like "scale in during accumulation phases and scale out during blow off tops" will give you a huge edge over typical investors, who usually do the exact opposite.
It is possible that we are saying very similar things, even though you seem to be emphasizing the trading angle quite a bit more than me, and for sure, I am not opposed to trading, especially BIG swing trading and also a kind incrementalism that involves shaving off some profits on the way UP.
However, I do believe that you and I emphasize degree a bit different, and you seem more inclined to recommend that investors get into trading early on - while I believe that trading is a technique that you might start after you have already established a target position and thereafter you would largely only trade after tailorizing some techniques that were fitting for your own circumstances - so there is no real correct answer including that BTC price direction is very difficult to figure out, even when the direction is seeming obvious.. and surely the direction really seems obvious after the fact.. but not so much while in it.. even though you seem to be suggesting that regular peeps should be able to figure these directional matters out.. especially with a little focus or training.. which I believe is much more difficult than you are making it out to be.. even if on the face of it, it seems easy-peasy.
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The problem with planning to buy all the way down in a bear market? Most investors end up piling all their capital in long before the bear market is over since they don't recognize how long it can last.
Fair enough.. but I still say it is really difficult to know, and for example, if a person has allocated $400 per month, which would be $100 per week, they could attempt to be strategic about it, or maybe they just invest $50 every week and attempt to be strategic about the other $50. I just have a lot of doubts about being able to know and attempting to be too strategic has high likelihoods of causing the perfect to become the enemy of the good... even though I understand he phenomenon that you are describing.
It's not just a matter of opportunity cost and badly optimizing capital either. Being in drawdown for multiple years is extremely painful.
If you are "investing no more than you can afford to lose" then maybe you should not be giving any fucks, rather than being in "pain" from such short to medium term (and seemingly long term) that ends up going up in the long run.. .. even though the short to medium term remains uncomfortable to some degree.
Many will just capitulate before price recovers (this is why we refer to 2015 and probably now 2020 as capitulations), selling to patient, stronger hands who understand the difference between accumulation and distribution phases.
did not work for me to cause me to panic. I did not invest more than I could afford to lose, and I was willing to ride it down to zero if need be, because it was just a relatively smaller (or extra) portion of my income.. and I still had all of my expenses, entertainment, emergency fund, etc covered by other funds. Sure, the amount invested added up during time, but I was stil just taking from an already decided set-aside allocated amount.. that I was willing to lose if prices kept going down, but I had a long term assessment that the asset was likely to perform well in the longer run... couple of years or even that my investment turned into a longer time horizon to allow it to play out.
Therefore, I did not sell any of my bitcoins, especially during my accumulation phase and even largely during my maintenance phase (which seems to be where I am at currently, even though I am thinking that I will advance to some kind of phase that has liquidations aspects in the coming few years)... except for I would sometimes sell strategically based on formulaic price rises that I had predetermined, and any BTC that I sell that goes beyond the formulaic amounts, I tend to replace, unless I can just plug any of my possibly relatively small amounts of sales into my already existing formulaic buy back practices.
That's why I strongly advocate at least loosely basing investment strategy around market cycles. Lacking awareness of them is what causes many people to buy high and sell low.
Perhaps we agree a little bit here. I do agree with figuring out ways to structure strategy to attempt to remove a lot of emotion.. so if you plan to buy on the way down or you plan to sell on the way up.. you predetermine amounts that work for you so that you don't really run out of fiat to buy or BTC to sell if the BTC price goes running in one direction or another.
I'm thinking as much about investor psychology and the likelihood that someone will capitulate as much as I am about their average entry price.
Sure, there are likely ways to take a decent amount of psychology out of investing.. so sure, even creating trading strategies that hedge or try to take out psychology seem to be very difficult techniques, especially if any kind of leverage is involved.. and that is part of the reason that I become a bit skeptical of any leverage, and I tend to recognize some more moderate ways of attempting to achieve similar goals without leverage (or only limited leverage if you can figure out how to properly employ it). Even just simple techniques of going long and closing longs, can become complicated, and if you add leverage on top of that, whewfta... becomes even more complicated to figure out.. and more likely to screw up.
A considerable number of those purported experts end up being wrong too, even though there might be some price points in which they ended up being write.. but many still might be saying to wait for two digits when the price is in the mid $200s.. and similar bullshit "waiting" assertions are made in modern times, too..
I've never advocated anything like that. I am only suggesting that an "always buy now" strategy is not optimal in terms of risk vs. reward. Maximizing my long terms BTC holdings is very important to me, and I am just imparting my experience since 2013 regarding the best way to do that.
Hey... I like a lot of your posts, so I suppose that we are just batting around some ideas here. Each person does have to decide for themself what they believe is going to work and to try to put their ideas to practice.. and sure sometimes it does not work, sometimes they learn and sometimes they do not.
Even if you, exstasie, do not recall times in which you may have influenced folks to sit and wait, even though they maybe should have just bought, rather than waiting, sometimes bearish calls do cause people to overly play bearish scenarios or whatever, and of course, we can sometimes blame them, too for assigning too high of a probability to downward BTC price movements that do not end up materializing... so yeah, buy on every dip or buy every week, or some variation of these techniques are going to vary between different person, and maybe we even argue about which ones work better under which scenarios and if some of them just work better as an overall rule.. for example, when in doubt, buy a little within your weekly budget rather than waiting.. or maybe just buy the whole weeks allowance.. surely discretionary matters, exist here..
