However, I checked your post history and found
this call also made by you on April 10th:
People, please keep in mind that a pullback is what the some investors are waiting for... to let exuberance pop. The fundamental value and promise that underlies Bitcoin remains strong. So hang onto your coins!
This was a bad call. Indeed price had swung widely that day from the all time high of $266 to $105, closing the day at $165. I'm guessing your call was around $130 when you gave the advice to hang onto your coins. However price dropped every day after that to a low of $50 by April 16th.
Guess you didn't see that one coming
No, all I didn't see was the magnitude. If you look at the post just before that one, I called a DDOS drop BEFORE the crash and recommend that people put in bids. It may be a little unclear out of context (if you weren't trading at that point), but that post means to put bids in significantly BELOW the market price. If you had sold around when I posted (to prepare for a DDOS buyback) the price would have been $230+ ($230 had some stability -- 260 was a hard-to-hit peak). I bought back too early (due to the incredible lag you just had to guess what the price was going to be 15 minutes later when your trade actually made it through the queue) at $150 giving a profit of only $80 per coin. When you want to lock in a profit, you err on the high side... and actually, my buys were staggered to catch the "DDOS" so I didn't do that well on every coin...
And as you can see by the post I was replying to, the price was already below $106 (probably FAR below given the velocity at that time). I was essentially suggesting that people think really hard before selling below $90-100 -- and as you can tell by the words "fundamental value and promise" this was meant to be long term advice. Judging by the oscillations in the next 6 months that has not been bad advice.
You can't quote a locked forum so here's the relevant profile page:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/thezerg-55749Thanks for making your case.
I agree that you called the DDOS attack and I will take your word for it that it was around $230.
However, what did you do with it? Did you advise to sell around $230? No, you did not. Here is what you said:
looks like the DDOS is here, flash crash to come soon... hope you put in your bids! Last chance for coins below 250...
So you advised to buy more on a possible correction, as you expected price to continue to go higher than $250 after the DDOS drop.
If one followed you and bought successfully more coins at say $150 that day he did not make any profit. In fact he just lost on the coins he already owned, and now increased his position. After that the price did not go back up to $250 but ended the day around $165. And continued to drop every day after that to a low of $50 a week later. So following your advise given, would have only increased the total loss.
That was a very bad call. Predicting an event about to happen correctly (DDOS) has no value if you got the big picture wrong (price will continue to go up after that, while it actually continued to go down) and the chosen course of action (buy more) makes you lose even more money.
About your second call during the drop to hold.
On the first day of the crash, April 10th, according to bitcoincharts data, mtgox price did not go below $105. So it is impossible that the price was below that when you advised to hold. Please explain, preferable with supportive data! Until then I have to dismiss your comment about that and will continue to use the price of $130 to use as the price when you placed your advise to hold. Note that weighted price of that day was $180, so I'm being generous already I think.
Advising to hold at $130 that day was the right call as the day ended at $165. However next day it dropped to $124 and continued to close lower every day after.
Today, 4 months later, there have only been a few weeks where holding at $130 was the right decision, all the others showed a loss. I don't look at the future here, only at the past to evaluate calls.
I think it is fair to say that overall it was a bad call to hold at $130 on March 10th.
Summarized, you predicting the DDOS drop and a sharp correction correctly was an accomplishment but advising to buy more if it would happen, and during the correction you advising to hold, were both bad calls. I will keep this as one bad call since it was the same time period, even same day.
I hope you succeed in the future to also get the big picture right (that the bull market was over and a bear market would start) and that you choose the right course of action so that you help yourself and others to reduce losses instead of increasing them.
I will evaluate your other calls from 2012 in a next post.
