Topic: Some Bearish Observations. - page 3. (Read 4646 times)

I'm fairly sure that Mat is not sure of the HODL strategy in the slightest.

If the market goes from 660 straight up to 4000, or 660 to 460 and then to 4000, or hell: 660 to 50 in a flash crash and then to 4000, doesn't matter to me. I'm not going to kick myself for failing to predict a crash.

The only way to win at this game is to have more information that the ones you're playing against. When you HODL, you win because you are playing against the large chunk of humanity who have not yet focused their attention on bitcoin. They're going to buy one day, and you and I know it, but they don't. We're not necessarily smarter than they are, we just got here first. When you play the short-term fluctuations, you are playing against people who have immersed themselves in all publicly available information on bitcoin, and may even be privy to information that the rest of us don't have. The odds are that you and I can't beat them!

This is very true. It's true of us all (and not just wrt investing -- life in general!) Many people recognize this in others but we all find it inherently difficult to recognize it in ourselves. Just recognizing it will often put you ahead of the game! (I am speaking in very general terms here.)


Yes. This is a hugely important, difficult battle! Requires discipline. Discipline is what I rarely see in those who post about TA. Their predictions are imprecise and posed in a manner such that whatever happens, they can say "yeah I predicted that." Very often, a long winded post will boil down to this:

"If the price drops, then [insert fancy TA terminology] and it will drop some more. But if the price goes up, then [insert some more fancy TA terminology] it will go up some more." The result is that the person ends up chasing the market: all too often, buying AFTER the rise, selling AFTER the fall.

Solution: make your predictions specific, unambiguous. The more you discipline yourself along these lines, the better.

Problem is you are looking at things the wrong way. You want fiat. This is a mistake. Fiat doesn't matter, the total number of coins once we eventually hit whatever high number matters. Thus, the goal should be to accumulate coins and to never risk them. Don't spend more bitcoins than you are willing to lose.

As you well know, reading markets is as much of an art form as a science. Anyone can cherry pick 'facts' to suit his own emotional bias. So perhaps the real battle is learning to calibrate ones tendencies for emotional bias. By announcing 'MatTheCat predicts', I am emotionally investing in a certain course of market action which may serve me up to a point, but I will more likely than not be required to change my stance as and when the market demands, but.....

MatTheCat predicts!

Despite the textbook bullish pennant, Bitcoin is more likely to break down before it can break out due to heavy selling pressure that seems to be operating primarily through Bitstamp. I am looking in the first instance for a retest of the $620 range and then we will see where we are and whether Bitcoin wants to rise or correct further down to say $580. In the case that I am totally wrong, then should Bitcoin break above the new long term downtrend resistance line currently at $665 (dating back to Nov 2013), and on strong volume, than that would be a time to go long.


That is just under $10K. I have already lost around $5K on a short trade I decided to 'Hodl' on knowing that the market would eventually come back to me. The market eventually did come back to my short-sell point (only just), but my nerve caved-in way before then at what turned out to be around $35 from the top of the market. That experience hurt a lot. The 'paltry' $5K certainly fucking mattered and I shall never take such a gung-ho and/or negligent approach to trading ever again.

Right now, most people around here are of the opinion that another large move up is coming around the mountain and I would tend to agree with them at this point in time. However, there is also a convincing bearish case that suggests we have just had a Wave B of a greater Wave 4 correction from the November ATH. If that turns out to be the case, which it might, then I don't want to be bag holding from the top of the market. I should still be holding my position from $460, but I thought I could be smart and take profits and buy back in on a correction that never quite materialised. Since then it has been a cagey game of in and out for me. Next time I catch a clear winning tide, I shall know to get the Bitcoins the fuck off the exchange and into some offline wallet before I start drawing lines on chart and go getting 'smart' ideas. But until then, I have decided that my risk tolerance is such that I will not sit back and hold if I am convinced that there is a strong chance that the market is going to move against me in the near future. If I cement small losses doing this and am forced to buy back in at a higher price on break out, then so be it. That is my new policy.

Thinking that you can glean anything about the future bitcoin price based off information that all market participants can see (order book, number of swaps, etc) is a mistake.

Yes when he admitted he only held ~13 btc I remember thinking , "why bother?".

Mat you are churning in and out of btc so often you are bound to lose. You must recognise that where the price goes from here short term is simply a guess, a toss of a coin, which incidentally you just have to react to.

The market cannot be predicted with a chart or TA by you in a way which will deliver consistent returns or more importantly beat a buy and hold position.

Just imagine how more productively you could have spent your time if you had bought, held and simply .. waited for time to pass!

If I were you I would buy back in, wait a year for btc to do its thing, then play wall st trader with a fraction of your gains. Yes it is still gambling that the bull market will continue, but you must have a a belief in bitcoin to still be here right?

Either way keep us informed

Good.  Matt has flipped back bearish.  Time for a rally.

How sure are you that you are interpreting this particular set of 'facts' correctly? How sure ought you to be to have exited your HODL strategy? I would say you need to be pretty damn sure. More sure, in fact, than you are that HODL will work for the pure HODLers.

I would like to see you test your ability to recognize actionable 'facts.' Every time you see what you consider to be a clear signal in the market, write it down as a prediction that is clear enough that a computer could decide the truth or falsehood (eg, "the price on stamp will drop to xxx between now and xxx," something like that). Write down the date and time of your prediction. Also, rate how sure you are of yourself. Do this whether or not you actually make a trade on it. Heck, even post your predictions here as an "official Mat the Cat Prediction." After, let's say, 20 such predictions, you will calculate a batting average. That way, next time you are trying to decide whether to take your coins out of cold storage, you can remind yourself what your batting average is.

(Disclaimer: always take unsolicited advice with a grain of salt  )

the Mat the cat contrarian indicator has switched! buy buy buy buy!

I notice also that during the night (for me) or rather the very early morning, that both Huobi and Bitfinex broke to the upside on strong volume. But Bitstamp, didn't get out the $650s. The break out on Bitfinex coincides with yet further ATHs on the USD swap rates....could of course be yet more short stop loss farming by the rats who operate the exchange with access to the required inside information.

As I said before, Bitfinex wants to go up, Huobi wants to go up. But Bitstamp just will not budge which means that the market will not budge. Peculiar.


and I resolved to wait on getting some kind of strong intuitive feel on the market before exiting my position.....but too many 'facts' were staring me in the face to ignore and I have to let logic thinking guide my decisions to some extent. So I decided to cement some losses. I got up this morning and saw Bitcoin $10 higher than what I sold at (on Stamp), which seems to be as high as it is getting for now.....pffft....I really don't know what is coming next......forces at work operating through Huobi and Bitfinex that definitely want market to go higher, but forces at work on Stamp aint having it. Why is this? Because Huobi and Bitfinex both do leverage and probably also completely fake volume and Stamp does not? If there are whales on the other exchange gladly willing to bid Bitcoin up on other exchanges why aren't they also doing it on Stamp? Could it just be insider short stop loss farming or something even more nefarious?

It is perfectly reasonable to think that we will falter at this point. Past patterns also point to this. It's just a question of how much before the return upwards.

For what it's worth, Mat, from one shit trader to another, I've been experimenting with leveraged longs and also closed my position last night at a loss, although I have a small overall net profit so far since the start of this uptrend.

I just meant that, right this moment, I see a slightly higher chance for a price drop than for a price increase, though I believe the upside potential to be a lot higher than the downside potential, so I'm personally not tempted to sell. So in that sense, if he'd be disciplined enough to trade like that, it might make sense to be in fiat now to make a quick buck during a drop. But agreed on the rest. Mat kind of seems to have some decent intuition for the market. He just completely lacks trading discipline and emotional control, from what I can tell.

Learn to cuss properly mat. And stop throwing money at something you are terrible at. If you can't trade and can't even hold you are better off getting out completely. I suspect you would actually enjoy having another sob story to tell in a few years.

Yep many small losses, many small gains, and lots of nerve cells later he'll come out where he started, in usd terms, if lucky, and the question is why even bother?

He bought those coins at $660, so he cemented a net loss. I think it's always a terrible choice to start trading again when you know and admit to yourself you are completely crap at it. It just makes no sense to me at all. Considering Mat wasn't even able to hold his coins in cold storage for a week I doubt he will be able to when he gets lucky to get in lower. Something will happen to shake him out of his position again, you can pretty much bet on it.

Good luck, mate. Set an alarm for the night if you can, in case there's a sudden swing upwards, and if the drop you're expecting happens, don't get too greedy. Take a look at likely fib levels, maybe daily BB, and take a profit in BTC if you get the chance.

Maybe more principally, make up your mind what kind of trading you want to do: trading for (moderate) USD gains, and securing them as soon as possible? Then selling now probably wasn't a terrible choice actually. Or trying to maximize your profits over a longer period? Then I think you need to get used to letting profits ride a bit longer. But fuck this, don't know why I'm lecturing. You seem to know what you're doing, by and large.

Another bearish observation is that btc-e is still adhering to a descending triangle:



Perhaps the manipulators decided to fool people by breaking it on bitstamp and china, but keeping it on btc-e.  

You're playing with fire Mat.. you know you're a shit trader but you're still trying to trade? That spells trouble. You should have kept those coins in cold storage like you first intended to do. Maybe people have been wanting USD on Bitfinex to be prepared for an expected breakout to the upside soon and haven't actually taken their leveraged long position yet? You don't know how much of those $8M increase in USD swaps are actually stuck in leveraged longs right now. Anyway I wouldn't base my entire analysis and position on what's happening on Bitfinex, and I doubt the manipulating whales you fear so much do either. Perhaps they were just waiting for you to close your longs because they see your posts here and like to laugh at you foaming at the mouth when the price doesn't go your way.