Topic: Husband does not want me to Day Trade BTC but it works well for some, right? - page 4. (Read 8630 times)

I disagree with most here.  Bitcoins were MADE for day trading.  The huge swings in price daily makes it hard NOT to make money. Most of my invesments are "buy and hold" or dividend income stocks on the TSX. They see an average swing of maybe 0.05% oer day of value. Bitcoin, at least on Mtgox swing HUGE...like 5-10%...EASY. That to me screams volatility and not "long-term investment". Day trade that mo-fo and profit on the swings...not the overall value in 20 years.

It's all about proper money management. One trade can wipe you out if you placed 100% of your trading capital into the trade.

There is also "death by a thousand cuts", where even if you practice solid money management, your strategy just does not work and you "go broke" slowly, over many loosing trades.

The bottom line is it's a gamble every time you buy or sell Bitcoins, the markets truly unpredictable. You can't make those kind of risks when you're dealing with a low amount of cash. You could end up rich, or you could end up broke. But there's a much easier place called The Casino that you can do that. The only way I would day trade is with Bots and if I had a lot of money to work with. It just isn't worth the risk especially with a couple BTC you would only be making a few $$ off of every buy and sell.

I do that (Sell at X and try to buy back lower.) Sometimes it works, sometimes the price goes up and gets away from you... Either strategy is gambling.

I agree with this person's post.

Daytrading/swing trading is gambling.  And the house odds are stacked against you with the biggest variable... you!  It's too easy to be impulsive manually trading.  Sheesh, just a few weeks ago, I bought at 90 per BTC, it dropped to 70 for what seemed like eternity (but really only a few days).  I sold that purchase above 90, but not by much.  Hindsight is always 20-20 and hindsight clouds your future vision.  I think crypto currencies give all of us opportunities to make money...  but you have to be smart about it.

For me, I mine, earn, keep, and hope it continues to climb.  If not, I'm only out some hardware/power $$...  Otherwise, buy and hold and give yourself a sell price to watch for to sell and reap the profits. 

I only see it's profitable when price crashes on gox, and even you time it right, yet probably not everytime, the profit is probably not 50x of investment like speculating on those alt-coins. LTC was 0.0022btc a few months back and now it has 10 times+ more value, and if it catches up with the 1/4 btc value (which is the upper limit resource-scarcity-wised. ), you'll be up like 100times by hoarding LTC since that time. I don't see how one could day trade btc on gox and get 10x profit in 3 months, especially when trading fee is in percentage.

Thanks, good to know.  As I thought in a backtest it would eat up a ton of profits for felt security. But this is exactly what i mean. It isn't really a very good money to maximize returns, it only lightens your returns and risk if the asset you invest in blows up. Like lets say a crash from 130 to 3 dollars...

It works particularly well with a fixed combination of Exchange traded funds and governments bonds, where you never sell before you retire. You just rebalance the ratio of index funds to government bonds to keep it steady, buying low what lost in value.

There is certainly a case to be made for trading, and more so for arbitraging across exchanges.

But the deal breaker for me, is that you are forced to leave funds and BTC on deposit on the exchanges to pursue any trading strategy.  None of the exchanges offers proof that they are not short BTC on a day to day (or even monthly!) basis.  Many exchanges have turned out to actually be short BTC and gone bankrupt leaving their depositors holding the bag.

Until they prove differently, I assume all exchanges are using deposited BTC to fund their operations.  

So what's your strategy? I didn't think it was possible to hedge/do risk management with bitcoins, but maybe I'm wrong.

Just for kicks I analyzed what would happen if you started with $100 2 years ago and rebalanced daily. The price was $3.5 then, which would give you 15.344 btc after 0.5% fees. Today you would have $478.80 and 3.546 BTC, for a total value of $957.60. If you kept the $50 and equivalent BTCs the total value would be $2121, which includes about $40 in saved fees.

I seems some of you are very smart about it!  I am not sure I am that smart.  It seems more complicated than at first glance and I think the very successful one are like Schrankwand and have a methodical approach.

I did try day trading yesterday with just a few bucks.  I came out ahead with a little more BTC than when I started.  I think our best strategy will be to leave the bulk of BTC untouched and secure and then I can just play with a little for the fun of it.  I wish Bitfloor was still out there.  They would pay a small fee when a bid was accepted.  Mtgox charges a fee and that eats up any profit on small increments so it does not really make it worth while unless you can sell high, hope the market goes down and by low.  I wonder what the sweet spot is for actually making profit doing this on Mtgox?  I would think it is at least a $2 difference in price but I am not sure.  I could probably try to calculate it but math was never my favorite subject.

Here is my take on it:


You could use rebalancing, which means you always have 50:50 in Bitcoin and USD. It isn't a very useful method for generating money, but makes risk aversity an option.

Basically: Bitcoins rise, you sell, Bitcoins go to valley, you buy. Trying to keep the ratio right.

You could do this with 90% of your Bitcoins. And keep most of these bitcoins in a secure wallet at home, not on the exchanges, if it is there, you WILL tempt yourself.

With the remaining 10%, you trade. See it is a game, where you play with it.

Read this book first though:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Disciplined-Trader-Developing-Attitudes/dp/0132157578/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367153859&sr=8-1&keywords=the+disciplined+trader

This book does not give you any technique for daytrading or trading in general. It largely takes on the psychological side.
You see, I know my share of traders and investment bankers.

I am a psychologist by trade and we have usually worked with them on only one thing: Their attitude, their psychology.

Trading is partly about technical knowledge. But the psychology is more important, because you need to know when to act and stop doing things that you know are stupid. And you WILL do them.

I talked to an investment banker involved in complex derivative trading from the London City trading floors some time ago and asked him:

"How do you do it? Stay cool, when you hit a button and it just might blow a billion? With your managing director ready to send you off in no time and even sue you if things fuck up?"

His answer might be something to ponder:

"Because it is NOT MY MONEY. I don't give a fuck. We all don't. Our bonuses are paid by the bank, the customers leave their money here and they want to see results. So we don't give a fuck. If this was my money in the bank, MAN, I would piss my pants every time I send a trade. I'd get a heart attack when I turn 40 my friend. You see, I don't play with my money, I play with the money of others, that makes things easy."

Another friend of mine that is successful with daytrading, however with Forex, not derivatives, said the following being asked the same question:

"I just love the rush. I do the calculations, I do the technical things, I do my analysis. But then, when it comes to commit, that is like a fucking bungee jump. Im not gonna do this anymore when im 40, im gonna retire. But man, I love this thrill. But you gotta be able to be both: Do your calc, be really cold hearted, smart thinking and then just go nuts, go wild and go risky without looking back once you made your decision. And this is what is so stressful, you go from being the math nerd to being a crazed mofo sending off his whole fortune into the limbo of currency exchanges..."


So, the people who are doing this, largely have a trading mindset. Whatever their strategy is, they usually program some of it. I have seen guys do trading bots because they said hitting the button themselves every time is gonna make their heart blow once they hit 35



Is this something you want to be in? If yes, read the book first. If you still want to be in there, get yourself info on really basic analysis charts and basic math. Play around with maybe litecoin or namecoin, something that isn't worth that much but could hurt a little when you loose it, to keep you in the feeling of "i lost money" when you fuck up.

Another thing to ponder: You will loose money sometimes even if you make the right decisions. I am not sure if you ever played poker a little more seriously before. Playing poker, you have a closed system of probabilities you can work with. You can, at every point in time, do math that will tell you the expected value of your next move. You might have gone with two aces on the flop. Probability tells you that you will win 80% of the hands. You raise, someone checks the raise and here comes the flop with two kings and a 2. You barrel another opening into the pot on the flop and the other guy just raises you with three times the amount. You have an 80% chance of winning before. The chance that the guy has the other king is now 2/48 and he might beat you with a 22 pair also. Are you willing to bet on that? Are you willing to put 10k in the pot?

A poker player does this and he looses in a lot of cases. And although he looses, he will gladly do it again, because he was right. Because the numbers will add up.

Trading is less deterministic, your systems will be more voodoo than most poker strategies and you will loose money even if you were right.

Can you stomach that? If yes, go for it. I got into the whole bitcoin thing because my trader friends told me that it is real fun, considering that the order fees are so small, that you can profit with minimal wins. He also said that the market manipulation by bigtime capital holders going on for BTC-E and Gox is so funny, because if it were done on an exchange, they would be gone for insider trading. In Cryptocurrencies, this is all allowed. And fun, if you can stomach it. If not, hold it and stay conservative. This isn't for everyone and you risk loosing EVERYTHING.

If you daytrade, you are daytrading against me. Our algorithms enable us to churn about $100k monthly out of the casino OR increase our BTC denominated holdings by that amount.

I don't mean that you lose the money that I gain. Almost everyone makes money as the price rises this rapidly. But with noob skills, daytrading can only reduce your BTC holdings over time (and in the best case, significantly reduce risk - if you perceive holding USD is less risky than holding BTC).

For most, I suggest buy and hold, and work and earn, to buy and hold more.

Yeah, it just deflated from $266 to $130, or that was the USD deflating?

Don't agree. It's much easier to trade 1 bitcoin and have more free mind to make decision when you are trading something worth 130$ than 13 000$. I'm quite comfortable in trading my few coins as it wouldn't make lot of change for me if I'd lose them all but I doubt I'd think like that if my coins are worth 50k-100k.

Bigger value bring more emotions if you're not pro and emotions often lead to wrong and/or bad timed decisions.

This.

since when has it been stable enough to daytrade btc?

I subscribe to the theory that there are only two likely long term outcomes: BTC becomes worthless or it becomes ridiculously valuable. Based on that I think buy and hold is a sensible strategy, provided you don't put too much money into it, and day trading isn't.

On the other hand, if everyone hoards their BTC, then it will never be used for real transactions and therefore won't become immensely valuable. If adoption grows, so will the exchange rate and at some point people will wisely start to cash out and adoption can increase even further. I think that if my small stash of BTC ever becomes worth $100k, I will sell 90% of it, if the remainder reaches $100k I will sell 90% of that and so on.

If the amount you've put into Bitcoin is more than you're comfortable holding for a decade or more, then you should sell off some of it until you are comfortable with it. You could time your sales, but I wouldn't buy anything, just try to offload your excess reserves near peaks in the exchange rate. Or even better, use the BTC to pay for goods and services, and maybe choose the timing for that wisely as well.