Are you following your own example plan or are you still day trading like earlier this year and late last year?
I have never been daytrading BTC. I sold in Nov-Dec and bought back in Feb, so my classification would be "swingtrading". Before and after that I had very little in exchanges. Of course as the price rises again, I'll have to figure out how to divest. I am open to suggestions from all lawful buyers who pay first, after the price crosses $3000.
I'm not against the plan you pose above, in fact I support it, but it is easier said than done when your motto is to diversify. Price upticks generally get people to sell.
Problem with people's natural instinct is that they sell in the meager upticks in the early part of the move and then
don't sell when the price goes ballistic, which would be a good time to sell (with a plan).
All in all, people who keep their funds on exchanges to attempt to scalp the markets will likely end up losing purely based on the single biggest security issue with that type of method, 3rd party risk.
I also lost
BTC250 with Mt.Gox, and I am not proud of it since it was a losign proposition to start with. But that was still only a fraction of my gains made by swingtrading last winter.
Wow you make my meager holdings look even more pitiful. I do not have the skills nor the psychological make up for day trading but would you be willing to explain swing trading a bit more? I understand if you don't want to share any secrets, but as someone that is all ready at a place I can only hope to reach one day anything you would be willing to share would be most welcome.
When Rpietila is talking about swing trading, he is referring to selling only on very large upwards price swings, and buying back at a lower point with those proceeds.
Even swing trading cannot be timed exactly, so for example Rpietila bought a lot of coins below $10 and below $100 (he claims to have more than 10K coins, which I have NO reason to doubt). In November 2013, when the price spiked, beyond $600 per coins, Rptiela sold 2K coins (or something like that); however he regretted not waiting a bit longer. In any event, when he began to sell at $600, BTC prices were well above the trend line, so it is really difficult to predict that the price is going to double again from there and so quickly.
Currently, the trend line is in dispute, and probably Rptiela will put the trend line in the $1200 or greater area, yet I am much more conservative, and I would put the trendline around $800 to $900. In either case, if BTC prices quickly go into the $2,000 price arena, then neither of us disagrees that we are above the trendline, but each of us may conclude at a different point about when to sell and how much to sell. Rptiela is NOT selling his whole stash, but only a percentage of it.. 10 to 20%.. and then hopefully buying back, but at the time of sale, he may have received much more than a 4-6x price growth.
On the other hand, if prices only inch up for several months and even years, there may be some debate about whether the trendline has shifted or where exactly is the trendline, in order to know exactly when to swing trade. Yet, if you hold a stash that has appreciated 4x or more, it would be prudent to rake some of those profits, and if your BTC stash has appreciated by 10x, you are in a much more solid position to take up to 20% of the stash as profits, and you would have taken out double what you had originally invested into it.
This swing trading is NOT typical day trading but still retains many of the prediction and analysis risks, but frequently, if you have bought fairly low and then there is a considerable appreciation in your BTC stash, then you can take various measures to take some of those profits and/or to reinvest some of those profits to increase your stash. One problem with continuing to increase your stash and never taking profits is that if the asset goes completely belly up, then you will have NOTHING to show for all of the profits that you have made. In that regard, it is very prudent to have a plan for taking profits. My plan for taking profits begins at around the 4x level.... however, if I am paying some attention to BTC prices and movement and politics at the time that my stash reaches the 4x price range, then I may adjust some of the specifics of my selling depending on what is going on in the BTC space at the time.
Sometimes, it may be better to NOT engage at all (b/c any of us can easily predict wrongly b/c of the many factors including price manipulators), but just lay out a predetermined plan for taking out money at certain price points or to reinvest certain amounts of money at certain price points.
