Topic: Price holding super-steady: launchpad formation or thin ice? (Read 2185 times)

Thanks, I made enough $$ investing to retire younger than most, now I'm just trying to put the icing on my financial cake through Bitcoin and other outlets (including some TA-based short-term trading in markets which are more liquid, slower-moving, and not news-driven).

BTW I'm not a permabull on Bitcoin or anything else, quite the opposite, skeptical nature, have a decent track record spotting bubbles and long-term tops and bailing out (too?) early.  Sold all my tech stocks in 1998 and put house for sale in 2006.

But I really think Bitcoin is a once in a lifetime event, a hydra with many disruptive heads.  To try to trade it is like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.  At this volatile embryonic stage, it will live and die by fundamental newsflow and crush any speculators putting all their eggs in a TA basket.  Mini bubbles, collapses, and dramatic reversals will throw off all but the strongest and nimblest hands.

Nevertheless, I do appreciate the bears on this forum, it takes courage, and it's always good to hear polite opposing viewpoints like arepo's, even if at this stage I'm more open to fundamental arguments rather than TA arguments.  The TA tactics will undoubtedly have their day in the sun once the BTC market matures and deepens, although that could be quite a few years from now, assuming Bitcoin succeeds as a viable currency.

+1  .  Do you invest for a living or just for retirement purposes?

Hmmm...I didn't imply anywhere that TA would be a predictor of newsflow, quite the opposite .  My whole point was that TA is not useful in a small illiquid market like BTC, because the impact of news can totally overwhelm chart formations at any given time.

Using TA in Bitcoin is like using TA to analyze a Canadian oil exploring microcap.  Overbought, oversold, support, resistance, all miss the forest for the trees given that the next drill hole can yield a new oil field, or render the project uneconomic.

I think anyone trying to get too smart with TA in Bitcoin risks losing their position in what could turn out to be one of the greatest investment opportunities of all time.  I admit, perhaps I'm biased towards an investing style that has worked well for me, identifying trends based on fundamentals, with multiyear holding periods.

If I'm wrong, then to those who make money calling tops and bottoms, I salute you.  But in meatspace, I've yet to meet anyone who can successfully and consistently short-term trade volatile explorecos or tech startups.  Hence my skepticism of similar strategies in the Bitcoin universe.

im impressed. creating proprietary indicators that work is indeed an accomplishment.

i wasn't trying to get bites, but you made a blanket statement that was just incorrect. lagging indicators are not useless just because they represent an echo.

the whole point of indicators is simply to visualize data that isn't accessible through conventional means. a price figure and historical graph and volume bars by period hide so much information.

if you don't like the MACD, that's fine. i don't like a lot of indicators that are "tried and true".

and anyway, i, too am enjoying watching BTC trade. mainly because i feel vindicated after all the flaming and derision about my bearish predictions...

Oh my, we're going to the old tried-and-true method of forum battling where we call each other out on our knowledge? How quaint.

I'm not biting. I've done this stuff before - I don't use trendlines to predict, and I have my own proprietary set of indicators that don't have the traits all the standard "lunchbox" variety of indicators do. But this took time, a LOT of time to develop. I know how hard it is to look at a chart and formulate trading rules.

I suppose this is where I'm supposed to trivialize your education or something, but you know what? I have a more interesting thing going on - watching BTC trade.

Enjoy.

My assumption is not worth shit, I agree, what I'm trying to show is bitcoin market cap vs that of "bitcoin friendly" markets.

My assumption also remove any possibility of speculation from those who've for long benefited from these lucrative markets.

I would guess Mr dot com and the like would like pieice of the action AND a stable market, showing confidence to their customers.

this is a terrible misconception that just about everyone has. charts are not meant to predict the influence of news, but rather make observations about market forces like the behavior of an asset that is overbought.

as price goes up, the incentive to take profit goes up. if an asset were incredibly overbought and an influx of new money began flowing into it, market forces may prevent the 'obvious' rally from happening because selling pressure would increase in proportion.

kind of like what is happening right now, in spite of the reddit announcement.

charts will never predict single movements by large actors, or anything like that, and no one is claiming that they have the power to.

trendlines are subjective and are not superior to charting but should be taken on equal footing for a more complete picture.

by your definition, all indicators are lagging indicators. the MACD goes 'up and down' as an echo to price but there's more to it. sometimes the price makes new highs but the MACD fails to. other times, the opposite happens. the crossovers of the slower and faster moving averages also represent information about the rate of change in price compared to its historical rate of change. these are all very important observations. indicators do much, much more than mimic price movement. have you checked out chart school? i don't mean to be condescending, but you don't seem to know much about the MACD.

Agree. Charts rely on a past that is relevant to the present. I have sincere doubts the price mechanism of bitcoin 6 months ago is the same as it is today. I think the fundamentals changed with the Avalon release.

This is exactly right.  Coincident indicators, particularly in small, volatile, illiquid markets are pretty much useless.  

In mature slow-moving markets, one can sometimes build useful models or discover leading indicators and correlations that might indicate future price movements.  But in Bitcoin, no useful leading indicator, technical or otherwise, has been discovered that I'm aware of.  This is a tiny immature market where price movements will be driven for the foreseeable future by totally unpredictable newsflow.  You could have MACD or RSI overbought to the max...and then a 10x rise in price when some island country in the South Pacific announces they'll start using BTC as their national currency.

BTC could drop by 75% tomorrow, that's not impossible in a fickle small cap market.  But personally, I only intend to sell if and when the newsflow indicates that Bitcoin has hit a wall of insurmountable problems.  I don't think that charts patterns are an optimal guidance mechanism at this stage of Bitcoin's adoption curve.

Demand seems still  very solid
http://flic.kr/p/dVuEp2

i'm not saying anything about how long you've 'been around'. there is inherent risk in purchasing or even holding an asset that has made 500% gains in under a year. you seem adamant in ignoring this fact. the incentive to take profit grows with the price.

also, i'm annoyed that you assume i'm just some troll who's sold off and is trying to herd some lemmings. if that were the case i'd have a subscription service so that i could literally control a bloc of speculators. i post my analysis publicly for everyone's benefit. i called the knife and i hope at least one other person also profited off of it.

and i'm seeing what's happening right now. i'm not trying to be standoffish here, i'm just responding to the dismissive attitude i've been faced with since i started seeing divergences. like i said, if nobody wants a bearish perspective ever, fine. i'll stop wasting my time. i post publicly to try to help newer investors hear something other than moon-trajectories, so maybe they'd be able to respond properly to the correction that i've been forecasting that is happening as we speak.

I've said over and over if price violates my trendlines then I switch my tack. But lets move past the "screw you bull/bear" part of the conversation.

I know what moving averages are. They lag price. I also know what MACD is, and being composed of lagging inputs, also lags price. They also normalize price action and "smooth" it, to make things a bit more comprehensible to the trader.

This still doesn't remove the fact that they are - LAGGING indicators that do little else but mimic price movement. This, among other reasons, is why they are completely decorative and shouldn't be used to prognosticate about anything.

There is some problem in your assumption: why yearly, not daily or monthly? There is no magic in the Earth's orbital period

+1

What I would like them to do to estimate future Bitcoin price,

The safe 1% (no explanation)

MarketASize(yearly) divided by 21m divided by 100
+
MarketBSize(yearly) divided by 21m divided by 100
+
MarketCSize(yearly) divided by 21m divided by 100

(we all know 21m is not real availability, 15m is more accurate)

For example 
drugTrade 2003 : 350b$ / 21 000 000 / 100 = 166$ per btc 

A UN report said "the global drug trade generated an estimated US$321.6 billion in 2003."

With the newest Mega announcement I'd say that we are on a launchpad to the all time high. A lot of new money will come in next week. On the technicals I have no say, I put little faith in them anyway.

And just because I made my account here at that time doesn't mean I've not been around longer..
I'm annoyed with your flood of posts indicating that you've sold off and asking the rest of us here to follow the same old boring price pattern bitcoin has always been making.
Anyway, let's give it some time and see what happens..

edit: typo

it's not charting, the charts reflect knowledge that traders should have. you joined these forums when prices were already on their way towards $10. i first started following bitcoin at around $2.50 / btc. i'm sure there are some people who are still holding onto these cheap coins. at some price-point or another, they're going to figure the risk of someone else selling first is too great for the profit opportunity and sell themselves. this is what drives corrections. we haven't had a green weekly candle in almost two months. take the bulls out of your ears.


the MACD tracks moving averages. the fact that these averages have peaked recently, and that the shorter-term moving average is now BELOW the longer term moving average are both really important pieces of information about the rate of change in price compared to its historical rate of change. right now, we're underperforming the growth that we've seen the the past month. how isn't this important?

seriously, just because you're a bull and i'm showing you bear tracks on the charts doesn't mean that charts are worthless... sometimes charts give false signals, you know. you should probably argue for that instead.

Yesterday the price was about to decline a bit, then some really solid support, a wall of about 4.1K was placed at 27.0 to keep the price up. Usually there's more activity in the markets coming the week, compared to the weekend. So, is this a move to just keep the price up over the weekend, so that people will not lose confidence ? Without this support, I'm pretty sure we might've seen prices under 26 during the weekend.

I would not be surprised if this "reversal" call is wrong...again...