Topic: On short-term traders (Read 885 times)

There is no loser in a match that is an unlucky one who can be said to be a loser is someone who does not want to try, so trade, whether long term or short term is almost the same because everyone is different in thinking and different in capital, if you  have large capital, it is better to do long-term trading and vice versa

I do not like to generalize a public no matter what they are, I mean not on race or religion type of big deals but even smaller stuff like "short term crypto traders" which is a small number of people compared to other things but I always believed we can only judge the person and not the group that person belongs to.

This is why I think short term traders are all different from each other, there must be a short term trader that basically gambles away his money and makes risky stuff for higher rewards and lose a lot etc etc just like a gambler but I also think that there must be a short term trader that is a survivor who is making small movements and either profits tiny amounts or lose tiny amounts working really hard to not get caught in the movements, basically all short term traders are different from each other and individually I am sure there must be people who belong to any of those options.

I think that everyone who has chosen some of trading strategies has carefuly analised pros and cons. At least that is how it should function.
Short term trading is more risky but the profit is usualy bigger and faster. No matter the higher risk I wouldn't call short term traders gamblers, just people with the bigger risk apetite. And as long you know what are you doing there should be no problem. And if you choose short term trading be prepared to get fully dedicated to the market.

Yes, I have tried it already though in a small scale holding long for bitcoin. It can really have a huge profit over a period of time especially when one is a risk taker meaning to say that one has invested while bitcoin is down or having a cheaper market price and in an uncertain state of condition of market. Imagine if one invested while btc market price was on 3K usd pretty sure it would be already a profit but holding it for more will definitely take one to more than 2x-10x profit in the long run. Just make sure to check always the market price especially if bull run will going to happen.

Both as it pros and cons and if someone wants to be millionaire then holding is the option which will help you make money and those who want to make daily money which helps them pay their bills regularly then short term is the option for them .

I think that the division should go deeper

I mean the number of trades as such is not very representative on its own. In other words, an accomplished day trader can make a lot of trades one day and none the other day depending on the trading environment and profit potential. I'd rather say that short-term traders are looking for smaller profits in greater amounts and in a greater number of ways (by going short or long as they see more profitable at the moment)


Short term refers to the profit margin pursued

Short term trading is good in times of active market but wasn't good during slow moving market trend. We can't appreciate it's profitability during smaller volume of trading, because the movement of buying and selling cannot sustain the order book. With respect to longer term trading, it's advantageous for slow moving cryptocurrency because they needed to take such long timeline in order to grow it's profitable value.

Indeed that is target number one ; )

It depends on who's guessing because there is a difference between a blind yolo guess and an educated guess that's based on technical analysis where you long or short based on probabilities.

100% predictions don't exist, but based on probabilities you can make decisions that lead to profits on a longer term basis. If you're right even 6 out of 10 times with your educated guesses you're doing fine.

There are also patterns that you can exploit that do take longer to develop but are relatively speaking a safer guess. It just depends on what you look for at the end of the day.

I pretty sure when everyone choose a strategy either short term or long term trading then he will know the risk that will be faced. Also, he will overcome about the strategy in order to avoid the risk. Actually I'm not short term trading because I can't see the price movement per candle or per hours it will make me confused. But, there are many people who has an ability to passed this proccess until he is consider that short term trading is so usefull for them. Yeah, every traders certainly must have felt failure and they had experienced profound losses. But they will continue to struggle to avoid the same mistakes and learn every mistake he has made.

Long or short both is a guess and because the outcome cant be predicted 100% it is a gamble. Im with you on the loser part.

I am short term traders and long term traders, but I don't see I am a loser because at least, I can make my profit from my analysis. I realize that I cannot always make a profit and that is why I back up myself to be a long-term trader so if somehow I cannot make a profit in the short-term, I still have a chance to make a profit in the long-term. Both short-term and long-term traders will be as gamblers and losers if that person doesn't have any knowledge about trading and he cannot get the right information from many sources, so he buys the coins at any price without making calculation or analysis.

If that happens, then he always risks his money without having a chance to make a profit in the short-term or the long-term. I think he needs to make a strategy related to the market situations so he can act base on the market movements.

What you think is very wrong. a trader must have a different strategy and trading in a short period of time is one part of the strategy. every trader has its own plot. the situation and conditions faced will definitely be different. so don't ever assume that traders use a short period of time as a loser or gambler !!!!

I don't know how you can calculate someone as short term neither, now lets consider the day trader, that person is buying and selling coins probably inside an hour and do that couple of times which means he is definitely a short term trader, lets consider someone buying today and selling next year that means he is a long term trader (or someone who buys and sells when he retires which I plan to be) but what is the number that divides short term and long term? Is there a mid term as well? Like maybe 3-6 months, if its longer than 3 months its mid term but it has to be less than 6 months as well?

I don't really know what short term is but between people who buy and sell in an hour and people who buy and sell in a week are different kinds of people so I am not entirely sure if I can call them the same thing.

Short term traders are both gamblers and losers. It's clear that they are showing the quality of a gambler because when they chose a coin for their short term trade, it means they are really sure if it's going to increase and I'm sure that they are just giving it a timeframe if it really do well. And then they are losers, because they are going to anything to scare others and make FUD so they can buy that coin cheap again and sell and make the loop.

Short terms trading is not for everyone  and you most be ready to bear the lose because it is too risk to trade in that way. Those that desire to trade short terms should be ready to face whatever comes out of it and they should also be ready to learn from their mistakes.

It's not like all-or-nothing

In other words, if you keep on trying in a consistent and productive way, luck becomes a certainty and you are set to win in the end as no one can be losing indefinitely in "EV+ situations". To put it differently, you are playing the house here, and just like casino players are losing in the end, you will be winning. And in this regard, short-term traders have the advantage or the privilege to be the first to get there and reap the profits simply due to the short timeframe they are operating within

the biggest problem is the size of the rise itself that causes greed in people. for example when a newbie sees bitcoin price has gone up from nothing to $20000 which is millions of percentage profit, they start getting greedy thinking it is magic money that is going to make them rich over night so they enter the market head first and lose money in first fluctuation where the market doesn't go according to their dreams.

Reason why there are traders who trade like this is because they we're thought that trading is easy, Buy Low, Sell High. They we're encouraged by those whose main goal is to make newbies sign up under a referral link and then after that, they are on their own. Trading is not for everybody and it takes time for a trader to learn even the basics.

The vast majority are just bashing buttons and hoping to get lucky, thats the way of the world because being good at one of those things mentioned can take a lifetime and alot of background work before actually taking the decision to take the risk.   After all that you still have to get lucky to win.

The difference is the person who works at it, has determined the very best time to enter into the risk, they calculate the amount they can afford to lose and still come back tomorrow.   They know they might win on average possibly if correct but everyone loses in trading or whatever game some of the time, sometimes everyone loses

You can't really compare slots to poker. One is gambling and one is a game of skill based in probabilities, hence why professional poker players are an actual thing. The same applies to trading. Good traders are just finding EV+ situations, betting based on probabilities, and managing their capital risk same as professional poker players. The thing is, most people suck at trading.

If you want to make money at horseracing, own the track.

If you want to make money at blackjack/roulette/poker/slots/etc, own the casino.

If you want to make money daytrading, own the brokerage/exchange.

Otherwise you're just a rube.

As have I addressed it elsewhere but blow this off as well. 

Another interesting question worth discussing here

While technically there is no house edge in the way the odds are skewed in favor of the house in gambling, there is something which could be loosely called an effective house edge in trading. These are the traders which either don't trade or trade always profitably. A most conspicuous example is that of exchanges themselves which are taking advantage of their control over the trades and earning easy money here and there whenever an opportunity presents itself. So if we assume that trading, and more specifically trading cryptocurrencies, is a zero-sum game (which is a good assumption anyway), the presence of those milking the market is what makes this "house" edge


It is too tempting for an exchange not to trade against traders. Even regular and heavily regulated exchanges cannot resist the urge


I have already addressed this issue somewhere in the thread (it is not worth the effort)

Lol your funny man really.  Yes people can continually lose money trading it's called an addiction, they make money elsewhere and lose it trading.  To say that's not possible actual speaks a lot about your lack of true understanding.  

But this is exactly how it happens

There is no kind of absolute definition "sourced" from somewhere unto us which we should accept without any further question. And ultimately, yes, we have our own understanding of what every word means or describes. Anyway, appeal to authority (which is what you are doing here) speaks a lot about your own lack of true understanding rather than me failing to make a compelling argument. Put differently, you can't change an opinion or point of view where there is none to begin with


They can't consistently lose money. And there is no endless influx of new traders which could potentially give some credibility to your claim. These two factors can mean only one thing, that short-term traders cannot be losing money en masse


That's how bag holders are calling themselves (and hodlers, while we are at it). Simply put, "long-term traders" is a handy euphemism

I'm pretty sure I trust cambridge's definition instead of one of mine i just came up with.  Imagine if we all just made up our own definitions for every word.  Just by this thread alone I'd say that would be a complete mess lol.  

I sourced the cambridge defition
I posted a link from gambling research center at Rutgers
I posted a link from what Warren Buffett (the most prolific investor of our time) thinks about crypto trading and gambling

If these things dont sway you, I dont think I can.  It's a stalemate.  You have made no compelling argument to make me think differently as well.  So cheers keep on day trading and good luck to you.  

You have no idea of your own?



I'm not sure if some amount of risk makes it into gambling

Otherwise, everything and life itself would be gambling in general. And while some would undoubtedly sign up on this, it essentially makes the whole idea irrelevant and inconsequential. Really, if everything which involves a certain amount of risk (that is just everything) is gambling, then there is nothing that wouldn't be gambling. I don't think it is a meaningful approach. In other words, gambling is reliance on luck and luck alone, with no other option to win

 

 to do something that involves risks that might result in loss of money or failure, hoping to get money or achieve success:

Anyone who gambles on the stock exchange has to be prepared to lose money

[Source] cambridge dictionary link posted above.

Maybe, it's about time you came up with one?

You see, you talk so much about it, it feels like you should have posted it long ago. Regardless, when people start to speak about definitions of some intricate and complex notion or concept, it typically means they don't really understand the main idea behind it. Regardless, gambling is playing games of chance, i.e. where your only option to win is luck. If the game you are playing is no longer a game of chance, it is no longer gambling either, as simple as it gets. If you have some superpowers (or just an agency, for that matter) to calculate or otherwise determine the outcome of a dice roll, you are not gambling as you don't depend on chance anymore, end of story

  I think short term trading are probably good for those who wants quick profits, many people are afraid of the possible conclusion in the market as it has high volatilization. But I think it is about individaul strategy to deal the consequence between long tand short term trading. And I prefer to used long term and keep holding untill the great bull trend abruptly exceed.

you can never compare trading with gambling even if some people are gambling in cryptocurrency market and think of themselves as gamblers. gambling requires a complete unpredictability for it to be a gamble, like roll of a dice, even if you analyze the odds for a million years before rolling it, but the result is still 100% unpredictable. but when it comes to trading, the unpredictability is not 100% so it can not be a gamble by nature. specially when most of the times, rises and falls are NOT random even if they look it.

Cool if I know a star player is sick and might not play I will bet on the other team and it wont be gambling.  I wonder what kind of support groups exist for people addicted to calculated odds betting (not gambling addiction since that isn't gambling)

Here is a great write up by: researchers at the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick

https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/cryptocurrency-trading-appeals-problem-gamblers-185438426.html

Warren Buffett (but hey what does he know about investing anyway right) https://coinidol.com/trading-bitcoin-is-gambling/

So all in all you think short term traders that have been trading for x number of time (they survived?) know what they are doing and are exposed to little to no risk because it's all calculated. 

I do recommend you take a gander at the definition of gambling.  The phrase hope a certain outcome occurs strikes me as similar to someone who buys crypto and holds it short term in Hopes that it goes up.  But heyho maybe the people who defined gambling are wrong who knows

I definitely understand your pain

To ease it, I can show you the light and give you an example. Say, you have a supercomputer which can reliably calculate the odds of rolling a specific number in a dice game by taking into account a multitude of real-life parameters that the roll outcome depends on. Will dice then stop being a game of chance while rolling gambling? If your answer is no, then think again. Otherwise, you should agree that a game of chance (dice, heads or tails, whatever) is only such as long as our predictions are random (read, we take them straight out of our asses). On the other hand, if our predictions are not random, for ourselves it is no longer a game of chance even if our predictions more or less match the odds of the game overall

So if I put a blindfold on and pick a team to win that's gambling, but if I use analytics about teams, players etc and skew the odds in my favor(or so I think I am) that's not sports gambling? 

They are not, naturally

Tossing a coin is gambling and rolling a dice are unless you can skew the odds in your favor somehow. Experts in the field are doing exactly that by exploiting their expertise. They are not gambling, i.e. they are not relying on chance alone (which is the actual definition of gambling). Technically, even if you toss a coin or roll a dice using some obscure theory which allegedly allows you to predict the outcomes, you won't be gambling. Indeed, we know in advance that with these games of chance no theory is going to help you out but no one promised you that your theories would be correct (though who knows and it may help after all)

Just a side note, We are never sure if we are not against the house while trading  https://themerkle.com/what-is-the-willy-bitcoin-trading-bot/

That defines the decision when or where to place the trade, a well calculated trade still carries a risk. The unknown factor is the gamble that you take with placing the trade.

you're just pointing out that most day traders lose money. sure a small proportion of them are successful. but the same is true for gamblers.


your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise. you're only talking about bagholders---people who ignore all the rules of trading and don't cut their losses. your comparing "short term traders" to "bagholders", not "short term traders" to "long term traders".

Since some sports betters are experts or make educated guesses on their bets that means they aren't gambling?  Are you disputing the actual definition of gambling now 

I was thinking the same thing

Arguably the investors and users of BTC are the real movers of price and traders are sidelined vs that slower but stronger trend, whichever side bullish or bearish.

I take the BTC price right now as being outside its daily trend since April, it was an accelerated trend and should have sold off a bit more then it has.   Doesnt matter, we came out of the trend and mostly went sideways and now price is up.  Doesnt make any sense to me apart from the fact that the market has enough demand to raise sell order pricing, it could be natural demand or speculators and its hard to tell.   It is most close to gambling as there is too many unknown factors.

At best trading is a form of hedging a long term interest and a way to gain either way on price moves.



All I can make out right now short term is that is within a rough box like area trading up and down.   Maybe I misjudged and 8200 is the correct place to be short, I thought 8000 was a decent bet and I did close out a short in profit on that basis however it didnt gain much

As the saying goes, you can take a horse to water but you can't make him drink. I can show you the direction but I can't make you see the point. I can't accurately tell what the price of Bitcoin will be in 2 weeks (or whatever), but that doesn't mean that I will be gambling on it. If I toss a coin (not necessarily bitcoin, though) and make a trading decision based on the outcome or just make a wild guess about the future price, that will be gambling (but if I'm an expert trader, the latter wouldn't count). Anything else which involves a calculated decision (or an educated guess if you please) won't be

Will answer other interesting posts later

Agreed, I dont know if a single market where short term buys, investments, gambles, whatever you want to call it has reduced risk.  The shorter the time frame, the higher the volatility, i.e. risk.  It's not debateable

You assume like gambling, but you think it has a low risk, I think gambling have a big risk, isnt it?
I think short term has a considerable risk depending on the trader's skills. a trader must have a quick choice right? when the price falls they have to determine it quickly, mostly cutlose. that's why you have to analyze it so to avoid making mistakes like that

I think short term traders are the one that take the highest risk because within a very short minute, the market can consume their holding and goes back on because of the high volatility of cryptocurrency.

The option pools make me confused, I think short trader could be Survivor or Losers. Survivor its for everyone who does a trade using technical analysis or fundamental, then he will get a good entry or exit. The loser its for the people doing a trade without have some knowledge, just like a gamble but we call it "Loser" they will always enter the market because of fomo.

Just read the last part, so if team A wins 70% of their games when played in the rain, if I bet on them to win the next game it isn't gambling because I'm making a decision on a logical premise

Cambridge might want to have a word with you:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/amp/english/gamble&ved=2ahUKEwjp1YP-9OPiAhUs1VkKHbfmBigQFjAIegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw1oRML0LuLTjzUIRKVD97MB&cf=1&cshid=1560343998535

So you can accurately tell if the price of bitcoin will be higher or lower in 2 weeks versus if bitcoin will be higher or lower over the long term....my advise to you would be to find those people tell them to go to bitmex and take out a 100x margin position and ride their coat tails it should be super easy to do.

What's wrong with understanding my position?

I think I made it abundantly clear. If all trading is sort of gambling (that remains to be seen, though), then short-term trading (contrary to the public opinion, intuitive thinking and gut feelings) is most likely a form of trading which has the least "gambling" component in it for the reasons stated and explained in the OP. I hope I won't have to reiterate them here all over again


I guess you may want to revise your understanding of what gambling really is. If you are making decisions on some logical premises or factual information (read, your decisions are not totally at random), this is not gambling even if no one knows what the price of Bitcoin will be on Saturday, whether it will exist at all by the weekend, or even whether you will be proved wrong most of the time

That seems to be the part you are missing in your reasoning

Yes just like with sports gambling, you can have very educated sports gamblers that know how every individual player is doing, stats of playing at night vs the day, home games versus away games, playing on a weekend vs. Midweek, the list goes on and on but it never takes the gamble out of that bet

I never said longer term trading isn't gambling.  I dont understand your position.  In short no one knows if bitcoin will be higher or lower on Saturday, therefore making it a gamble.  Some people use certain methods to narrow down the gamble but its gambling.  Just like in sports you dont know if the best team will win on a given day, but over the course of a given year you can safely assume they will have a winning record, i.e. the longer the timespan the lower the variance.

I cant be convinced that short term trading is profitable doing it all the time.  Is it bad, no I'm not saying that most of us have taken a gamble from time to time

It depends on the individual. Some traders have extraordinary talent and can move in and out of the market quickly and profitably. However, most traders are bound to fail statistically, and even successful traders can have a few bad months in a row. The best strategy, in my view, is to simply buy and hold. Short-term trading can be compared to gambling insofar as it can be harder to predict the sudden swings in the market. However, there is definitely skill involved in trading.

Now you are starting to see the light

That gamblers in trading are not inherent to just short-term trading. You seem to accept the fact that they are also present among longer-term traders. Now you have to make the next logical step and understand that the majority of people can't be losing all the time as it is against human psychology and people's ego (apart from die-hard masochists and their likes, of course). But short-term trading is where this becomes evident and pretty fast at that. Then you've got to realize that gamblers can't possibly be the majority of people engaged in the short-term trading. They come and go, and if they don't quit, they go to longer terms and there they accumulate

I do consider short term holders as losers because they  had the highest chance to lose money. I do not see short term holder here became successful in their activity. As you can see short term holder will have to gain low profit and then when they decided to join again then it will become risky as the market price has high volatility. If market price continues to drop then short term holder will lose more money in the process as it will resort to selling asset even if the market has been falling.

Gamblers for sure, I have met with bunch of day traders in my life and they are usually people who trade according to strict rules which is why I will always love them but will never become one of them. They trade with military precision and they never get out of their system no matter what happens which is not something people who do not have that discipline and I am one of those people who do not have that.

However, they are always trading and profiting on regular days, they never profit on wild days big things happen, even while going up they profit less than others because they are focused on the small movements and when something big happens they always miss, they either win small constantly or lose a lot once for whole their life which I think is rolling a dice and hoping this would be a regular day and not a wild day in bitcoin.

In trading there is no house. The house edge is basically the commission that your exchange charges and also the spread which you pay if you remove liquidity from the market makers.

However you are not trading against the exchange you are trading against other traders. And they take your short when you go long and vice versa.

So it doesn't always mean the house will win, however if you over-trade and end up losing more in commissions and spread then its the house edge which took your profits not the exchange. Don't know if this make sense. But its common practise among many new retail traders who generally take good trades but since they over-trade they still can't make a profit.

Fundamental value investing is all that matters and were people get rich. Get in on something you consider to be undervalued after research, and have patience, lots of it.

Never saw anyone getting rich off a bunch of continuous trades in a row. Those people usually lie and sell their premium trading courses and other online content which is where they make the actual money.

This isn't a thread about lending though, it's about short term trading.  Lending is a whole other topic.

I am completely agree with you.
I also believe that short-term traders have less risk  compare to other ones.
They are less exposed to volatility in my opinion.
Also as the OP mentioned they also have sure profits coming in that short period of time.
Really its a wise work to do.
They too take a little risk if we see in other prospective.
So they are indeed gamblers upto a certain extent.

I have been in the presence of pepe who trade 3 letter acronyms with no understanding of what they are buying or selling.  After being on this forum for years a large portion of people have little to no idea why they are buying something outside of the idea that someday they are going to be rich, so yes long term holders too are gambling a lot of times.  You seem to have been here a long time.  Can we not agree that people buy crypto in which they just hope it goes up?  If you ask them why I would reckon some would have no idea what they bought other than the drivel they read in one of the [ann] threads.  Throwing your money at that I would consider a gamble, whatever their motives might be.  I think we can agree on that right?

That's when priority comes into play. It depends on your situation why you are doing the short-term trading. Either for fast turnaround of investments or need of money. Either way, it is up to the trader how he will manage his portfolio. As long as he is responsible with his actions, there's no problem with that. At the end of the day, it is his money at stake.

They are gamblers, yes but with a systematic and somewhat genuine approach of beating the house on its own game. That might sound rosy and inviting but in reality, a lot of short-term traders are still losers though simply because their judgment doesn't match what the market has in mind or what other traders want to do.


Well to simply put, the house always wins, and that is in relation to the notion that short-term traders are essentially gamblers.


This I couldn't agree more. Most long-term traders (or hodlers) are simply biased to the thought that whatever it is that they're holding are going to make it big someday. Well I'm guilty of that but it works for me so yeah... Anyways, the hardest part perhaps of being a long-term trader is knowing when to continue holding or when to stop it since it's already a dying asset continuously deprecating value as time passes by.

How do you know that?

And please keep in mind, it is not like half of short-term traders are in this business "somewhat" for the thrill. They should be in it exclusively for the thrill alone since otherwise you have no reason to call them gamblers in the first place (and in the second place market selection instantly kicks in). With that said, your assumption basically leads to a suspicious conclusion that there are more gamblers in trading than gamblers in gambling, which would be a paradox (read, it is highly unlikely). Further, you can't make big wins with short-term trading by definition as this approach to trading is about accumulating small profits now and then, here and there. Definitely not something which true gamblers are looking for (big wins without much ado)

I would say the majority (over half) of people who shor term trade are in it somewhat for the thrill.  Stocks are a little different but you might have more groups in crypto that short term trade with advance knowledge of certain events and market movers that can make markets swing by themselves or with groups they are in.  TA in crypto on the short term is very fickle.  News swings the crypto market more than stocks (i.e. certain exchanges can say they are going to delist or add a certain coin and you will get wild swings simply based on that).  Those announcements can not be predicted on an accurate basis (unless you are in the know).  Things like that completely wreck any TA.  Long term I think you will get most everyone in this forum thinking bitcoin will rise further than today's price, for the next couple weeks who knows, maybe it pulls back maybe it goes to 9k?  It's a crapshoot.  That is why I think short term trading is gambling whereas long term hold (on the right assets) is less of a gamble.

But what does it change in the bigger picture?

I agree there might be people in this activity (that we call trading) who are in mostly or primarily for the thrill of it (as we all love the thrill of trading to a certain degree). But should we call them traders in the first place, and still less short-term traders in the second place just because they happen to make plenty of trades in a while? These people are hardcore gamblers deep inside but how many of them are out there?

It is. At the end the daily losses and gains over x period have to equal out or do better to keep in the profit zone.

There is always a unsure factor in trading so i would pick Gamblers out of the 3.

I know people that restock their balance time over time, that doesnt mean they are survivors.  If someone keeps putting in $50 a week into their accounts to trade and lose a lot of the time I would not consider them survivors even though they have been short term traders for awhile.  Crypto trading is an addiction for some dont assume that everyone who hasn't been "weeded out" is playing with the same initial bank roll.  Also there are people that both hold a portion of their crypto long term and short term trade.  They restock their trading accounts with some profits from their longs. 

There are so many different scenarios why people short term trade for an extended period of time, not all those scenarios are ones in which they are survivors

Short term trading is a better option as you are less prone to volatility which could happen in the mid or long term. Though markets recover in the end but if you need immediate money in between than may have to sell even in losses which may be really disappointing thing to do in the crypto as you can make a good return in crypto markets if stayed invested and in short term can book profits regularly.

I really think that short term traders have a little risk in not making their targets because of the range of their trading points, Yes this still count as gambling but with a little risk involved, And even though they are basing their assumptions on the previous market flow there is a high chance in winning by taking that chance than to do a long term trading.

No one says that

I specifically point that out by referring to a market selection which is a never-ending process. The fact that a process never ends doesn't make it static (though I definitely see your confusion). And as this process is pretty fast at eliminating wannabe short-term traders (unlike with other trading approaches), the end result is that most "long-term" short-term traders have to be survivors. But to be a survivor in this activity means being profitable, as simple as it gets


The timeframe for this turnover is pretty short, which I also mention in the OP. So it is not like I don't account for it. Moreover, it is the basis of my assumption. It is exactly the short timespan within which the market proves that you are not a short-term trader that makes it a valid assumption

I don't think that short term traders are gamblers at all. Given the fact that they probably need to rely on more technical indicators, as opposed to the fact that you can much more easily analyse the fundamentals if you're investing for the long run.

Nor do I think that short term trading is necessarily something that is unprofitable for everyone. If you have the necessary capital (extremely important if you want to influence the market), knowledge, and leverage - you can certainly be successful.

However, the point I think most people try to make about short term investors is that there is a lot of traders with absolutely no knowledge, that base their trades off pure emotion and no technical indicators or fundamentals that play in the short term markets. Not to discount short run swing trading or the like as a profitable long term venture at all.

Statistically around 95% of all traders end up losing money. This is based on stock, futures and forex trading, however I am pretty sure Crypto isn't too far off.

The shorter the time frames you trade the harder it is to make money, I think that day traders who are succesful and do it full time are less than 1% of all active traders.

The longer time frames, it becomes easier to predict the market however most people don't have the patience or capital to wait that long to make some money. So most people prefer to trade on margin and want money in an hour or a day and they usually end up losing in the long term.

i disagree with calling short term traders, gamblers even if most of them are actually gambling.

people who do this:
are gamblers but that doesn't mean short term trading is gambling. basically people who do this and are only successful when price is rising are not even trading, they are making a bet of buying something and selling it later for a higher price. but trading is not that. trading means riding the market movements no matter in which direction they are going and making profit from those movements.
so if you were a trader then you should be able to make profit in both 2017 and 2018 despite the different trends.

This is a big part of it. I'm not sure whether it's a truism, but it's commonly said that 90% or more retail traders lose money. The brutal realities of day trading are constantly weeding losers out of the market, but new traders are entering the market every day. The OP doesn't seem to be accounting for this turnover.

Plus, I've come across many traders who seem to approach day trading like degenerate gambling. They lose over and over and keep reloading their accounts. They aren't truly trading to make profits. It's for the gamble, the adrenaline rush. I'm not sure how many of these people exist in the market, but they definitely exist.

In my own anecdotal experience, my win rates suffer when I trade very low time frames. The signal-to-noise ratio is too much to overcome. Higher time frames are much more predictable.

Who says the participants in the playing field stays completely static.  New short term traders come along all the time until the machine spits them out.  2017 everyone was a successful trader, tell me how many of those traders that had the same success short term trading in 2018.  It's a circle when things are good everyone knows what they are doing, when market is bear no one knows what they are doing.  Dont tell me all these traders that were left after the natural weeding out were all on the sidelines from dec 2017 all the way to Jan 2019 then jumped back in and started to do their thing.

Heres the deal with crypto trading as with most other things, if you cant spot the fish in the room it's probably you.


Edit: randomly went back to Nov 2017 and found a poll.  Bitcoins price prediction 32 enter 32 miserably wrong.  It's tough man.  Not many people can make it as traders.  If all 32 people thought this way in that poll and had money to back they certainly would have bought the entire slide.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2371222.0;viewResults

After a lot of thinking, I came to a somewhat counterintuitive conclusion that despite popular opinion short-term traders are preselected to be successful. How come? Read further to find out

The popular opinion has it that short-term traders are essentially gamblers. But that's simply not possible due to the very nature of short-term trading as losses in this trading setup are set to accumulate quickly, so whoever tries it and fails has to wind up and do that fast unless he loses all and is stopped by his empty stomach. In this way, short-term trading brutally weeds out those who can't earn consistently in the long run. It is a type of natural selection where short-term traders are selected to be successful if they are to remain in the game, and this selection works fast at that

On the other hand, long-term traders have the option of turning into long-term holders and ultimately into bag holders if they are unable to earn consistently long term. Ironically, it is also kind of natural selection, though in this case in works in reverse, i.e. it is a negative selection which essentially favors losers, even though it takes years to reveal itself. Considering these two types of selection and their effects on different strata of traders, we have to conclude that the percentage of successful short-term traders should be way higher than among other types of traders

The bottom line is that whoever claims that short-term traders are losers en masse has probably fallen victim to a number of biases, misconceptions and prejudices as these traders definitely know what they are doing. Otherwise, they simply can't stay in the game for long and that's it for now