Topic: Goomboo's Journal - page 51. (Read 281462 times)

I was able to net .09 btc after fees on that trade.

Woohoo.  that's like .57

Well, it's cool to see it works.

Mtgox made a few bucks at least.

This^

I've been doing my thing, and then trying this out a bit on the side. The margins kills ANY attempt at profit with such little movement. I shorted early  .
Base @ $6.34, the best it got was +$0.07...

Goomboo was suggesting shorting on bitcoinica and going long on mt gox...

MtGox?

Where are you trading? Seems like when I trade on bitcoinica the margins just kill all my profits.

Well have gone in and out with the crossovers, and lost just a tiny bit

Refreshing to maintain the discipline by following a trading system. Now on to the next cross-over!

"It's a bull market you know!"  
that's probably one of my favorite parts of the story haha

Change it from Daily to Hourly - then you will see it


Thx, @Goomboo - it's a very nice topic!

But what do you do when it looks like this?


It doesn't seem like crossing, yet - does it?
You wait - or you sell?

From the OP...

You're using Exponential Averages, switch to Simple Averages.

I'm not seeing it.  Are you saying there was a crossing while today's candlestick was still forming?  Do you not wait for each candlestick to complete before looking for crossings?  Either way, it doesn't look like the price has been low enough at any point today for the moving averages to have crossed:

The stock analogy doesn't work. Stocks are not easily transferable, in fact stocks are heavily regulated. And companies can decide to launch new stock to the market.

Wealth of information in this thread!

Totally digging it.  Have to sleep and spend some time reading it tomorrow.

I am a little unsure as to whether or not BTC has a 'real value'.  IMO BTC isn't like a currency exactly.  It's somewhere between a currency and commodity.  The fact that there are only such and such a number of coins and that people might find utility in holding them or exchanging them exerts price pressure upon them.

Especially as the currency stabilizes I expect to see the utility increase, adoption to increase and relative price to go up.

At the same time, I appreciate the sentiment, because the only thing really propping up the price of BTC at this point is speculation because consumption is a relatively small amount of use for it.  

Good to keep my heels cool.  

Also... if you're shorting do you only short if you are just in time when the lines cross?  Will you short any time after the indication, or would your risk increase and reward decrease pretty quickly if you were slow to pull the trigger?

yeah, screw subjectivism

Have you considered automation?

I mean, if you're a proponent of using truly deterministic strategies for trading, it seems like a logical way to keep those strategies running without having to babysit them 24/7.

I believe that the $6.xx price of BTC as it stands now, is based on pure speculation.

Trading inside this highly speculative bubble is feasible to the extent that as you say "...the market can stay "irrational" a whole lot longer than I can stay solvent."  

Trading update:

-I don't have time to trade hourly candles in the BTC market right now, so I am moving to daily.

-Exited the trade at $6.33 - a loss of $.02 per BTC or .3% pre-commission.

-Short signal generated at current prices on daily charts using 21/10 (SMA)

-Short at $6.28 (Low leverage - the higher the timeframe, the more wiggle room you need to allow)

Thanks for the thought Vokain,

That's my goal - try to help people manage risk so that they don't lose the shirt they couldn't afford to lose.  Often people become enamored with an idea / concept / stock / etc. to the point that they ignore what is actually happening in the market.  If someone were simply following the trend throughout the life of BTC, they could have earned a hansom profit during the bubble, protected it nicely during the decline, and reinvested for continued growth - all of this while being enthusiastic and enamored with the idea.

Bingo... We're all nuts here.

Thank you for contributing to the thread - very well-written and informative,

Two of my favorite quotes from this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Technical-Analysis-Using-Multiple-Timeframes/dp/1598795805/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327372543&sr=8-1

"The market is a leading indicator of the economy.  Economists would be the best traders if a strong understanding of the economy was necessary to trade successfully"

"Do not force your opinions on the markets.  The market doesn't care what you or I think should happen.  Trade what you see, not what you think."

I agree that BTC is a currency and a method of exchange.  I think that $2.00 was a temporary floor because there were so many bids that sellers simply couldn't overwhelm them.  I think that it rallied because many people were looking for "a bargain" and purchased because it was at new lows.  I  believe that this current rally was caused by the positive reinforcement of fresh profits for those who purchased at $2 - $6.

This is an age-old debate we could go into - what caused the price to move: economics or market psychology.  Rather than getting tied up in a debate, my goal is to reach a common ground and that is that we are all seeking profit.  Often in the academic world I see people desiring to be "right" in diagnosing the economy rather than actually making money.  My goal here is that people be intensely rational about how they pursue it and protect their grandchildren's inheritance.

I do believe that BTC is in a highly-speculative bubble and that just like the traditional spot FX markets, >95% of the volume is done purely by speculators.  Additionally, from the knowledge that the majority of individuals are wrong and lose money when they trade, this furthers my belief when I look at the * on Bitcoinica.  However, all this aside, I will not force this belief on my trading.  If a long signal is generated, I will take it because the market can stay "irrational" a whole lot longer than I can stay solvent.